CULTURE
Paris Taiwan center opens
France’s second Taiwan Center for Mandarin Learning opened in Paris on Saturday, and is to promote Taiwanese culture and Taiwanese-style Mandarin learning in the country. The center was inaugurated at L’Encrier Chinois, a Chinese-language school that opened in 2005. Representative to France Francois Wu (吳志中) and Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) Deputy Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) attended the opening ceremony. Hsu said the center, founded by Taipei, serves as a platform for French to learn about Taiwanese culture and democracy. OCAC began opening Mandarin language centers in September last year. Today, 45 centers have been established around the world, including 35 in the US, two each in France, Germany and the UK, and one each in Austria, Hungary, Ireland and Sweden, it said. France’s first center opened at the Association Linguistique et Culturelle Chinoise in September last year.
CRIME
Police nab fugitive teacher
A former elementary-school teacher from Tainan, who was last year convicted of sexually assaulting one of his students, was arrested in Taichung on Saturday afternoon, after being on the most wanted list for more than two months, the Tainan City Police Department said. Chang Po-sheng (張博勝), fired in 2019 after being accused of sexual assault by the student’s mother, had been wanted since Jan. 26, after he failed to hand himself over to the authorities to start serving his prison sentence, police said. Chang was sentenced to four years and 10 months in prison. The ruling was final after his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court on Nov. 4 last year. Tainan police began to search for Chang after the prosecutors’ office issued a warrant for his arrest on Jan. 26.
SOCIETY
Boat sinks, killing two
The bodies of two men were recovered on Saturday after a cargo boat sank off Keelung, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said. The Tung Yang No. 6 sank about 0.2 nautical miles (370m) south of Keelung Islet, with its two Taiwanese crew members, surnamed Wu (吳) and Lin (林), trapped on board, the CGA said. Wu and Lin had no signs of life when their bodies were recovered by the crew of a leisure fishing boat and Keelung Islet security staff, the CGA said, adding that they were pronounced dead shortly after being rushed to hospital. The CGA said it believes the boat sank because of flaws in its drainage system, which caused the vessel to take on water.
SOCIETY
New hospital for Hsinchu
Government officials on Saturday unveiled a plaque for a children’s hospital in Hsinchu City. It is the first local government-initiated hospital to be built based on the build-operate-transfer model in Taiwan, Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) said. It involved the coordination of the local government, which provided the land, funds invested by Mackay Memorial Hospital and a construction firm, Lin added. The Hsinchu Municipal Mackay Children’s Hospital is to have 32 pediatric sub-specialty divisions, including acute care, rare diseases, obstetrics and gynecology, when it officially opens on Sept. 1. The hospital would enable children in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli, where there is no medical center, to receive the best possible care, as it is classified as a medical center — the highest level on Taiwan’s four-tier classification of medical facilities based on medical equipment.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
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