Checks on nighttime entertainment venues in major cities were conducted over the weekend, including raids in Taoyuan and Kaohsiung and fines to those found contravening the government’s COVID-19 prevention measures.
Taoyuan police expanded their checks after the Central Epidemic Command Center on Thursday ordered all hostess clubs and dance halls to temporarily suspend operations after a woman who reportedly worked as a hostess at several clubs in Taoyuan and Taipei became the nation’s No. 379 confirmed COVID-19 case.
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) yesterday said that police found 66 cases of clubs still operating or residents contravening quarantine and handed out fines totaling NT$13.84 million (US$459,755).
Photo: Wang Chieh, Taipei Times
Kaohsiung police and health officials raided four KTV parlors and restaurants where tip-offs said female hostesses were working.
Hostesses were working at two of the sites and the owners face fines ranging from NT$3,000 to NT$15,000, officials said.
In related news, a 23-year-old woman who reportedly works as a club hostess was detained for questioning in Tainan after she allegedly ran over an elderly woman yesterday morning.
She could face charges of driving under the influence as a breath test indicated she had a blood alcohol level of 0.5 milligrams per liter, Tainan police said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
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