SOCIETY
Tuan Tuan had seizures
The male giant panda Tuan Tuan (團團) on Thursday received medication after suffering four seizures and was being given intensive medical care, the Taipei Zoo said yesterday. The first seizure occurred at 4:41pm and lasted about two minutes, and the three subsequent ones each lasted about 90 seconds, veterinarian Cheng Chiu-hung (鄭秋虹) said. The zoo could not determine whether the epileptic fits were triggered by a brain lesion that he was diagnosed with in September, or discomfort in his digestive tract, said Lai Yen-hsueh (賴燕雪), the zoo’s chief veterinarian. The panda was suffering from weakness in his hind limbs, a problem that the zoo hoped would be gradually alleviated with treatment, said Wang I-min (王怡敏), head of the zoo’s animals division.
CRIME
River deaths verdict out
A woman who organized an outing to the Hubaotan (虎豹潭) area in New Taipei City has been given a two-year suspended prison sentence, with five years probation, for the deaths of six members of the group in a flooded river last year. The Keelung District Court said in a statement on Thursday that the woman, surnamed Su (蘇), was found guilty of failing to give proper instructions and leading the 28 group members to safety when the Beishi River (北勢溪) flooded during heavy rains on Oct. 16 last year. Two adults and four children were swept away by the river surge and were later found dead by rescuers. Su admitted to negligence, the court said, adding that she had paid nearly NT$6 million (US$192,493) in compensation to the families of the deceased before the trial. The sentence can be appealed. The court statement said that some of the deceased family members had agreed to clemency for Su during the hearing.
CRIME
Eight charged over cannabis
Taoyuan prosecutors have indicted eight suspects following the seizure of a large stash of cannabis plants earlier this year. The 4,218 seized marijuana plants — believed to be the largest seizure in the nation’s history — alongside finished or semi-finished cannabis products, was estimated to have a market value of NT$1.26 billion, Longtan Precinct told a news conference. Police said they tracked down the prime suspect, identified as Wu (吳), and an accomplice, surnamed Ke (柯), and seized the marijuana plants on a nearly 3,000m2 farm near an army base in Longtan District (龍潭) on Sept. 20, a week after receiving a tip-off. Wu, a flower trader who had links to organized crime, had imported marijuana seeds and taught himself how to plant them, an initial police investigation found. Wu also allegedly hired six undocumented migrant workers from Indonesia to help him and Ke on the plantation. All eight were arrested during the raid in September.
CRIME
Eel smugglers arrested
Authorities at Kaohsiung International Airport on Wednesday seized more than 60,000 live young eels that two Taiwanese travelers were attempting to smuggle out of the country, police said yesterday. The 66,120 glass eels were in the luggage of the travelers, surnamed Yang (楊) and Hung (洪), who were booked on a flight to Hong Kong, the Kaohsiung precinct of the Aviation Police Bureau said in a press release. The ray-finned eels were packed in 12 sealed plastic bags that contained water, and there were about 2,755 eels in each bag, which were found by inspectors when suspicious images showed up on the luggage scanners, airport police said. The case has been handed over to the Fisheries’ Agency for further investigation, the bureau 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
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
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
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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