CRIME
Pawnshop hit by bullets
A 17-year-old surnamed Liu (劉) yesterday turned himself in after shooting more than 50 bullets into a closed pawnshop in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城), the Tucheng Police Precinct said. Liu took a taxi to the pawnshop on Sichuan Road and at 8:52am shot in the store’s direction, leaving 65 bullet holes in the store’s steel shutters and nearby scooters, police said. He took the same taxi to the Banciao Precinct’s Daguan Police Station and turned himself in at about 8:55am, police said. Police cordoned off the area, and found a gun and two magazines at the site, they said. No one was injured, they said, adding that they are looking into potential motives.
Photo copied by Hsu Sheng-lun, Taipei Times
SOCIETY
Fire kills three people
A fire in a third-floor apartment in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) late on Wednesday killed three people and left one in critical condition, police said yesterday. Eight people, all from the same family, were pulled from the blaze by firefighters, who received a report of the incident on Danhai Road at 11:13pm. A 74-year-old woman, her four-year-old grandson and her 52-year-old son were pronounced dead at a hospital after out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, police said. The woman’s 58-year-old daughter, who also had a cardiac arrest, was resuscitated, but was in a critical condition, police said. Three other grandchildren, aged 19, 24 and 30, and the deceased man’s 42-year-old wife sustained minor injuries, police said. Authorities said they were investigating the cause of the fire.
CUSTOMS
Vitamins seized at border
A shipment of multivitamin tablets imported by warehouse club Costco was seized at the border after being found to contain residues of a banned preservative, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Tuesday. A total of 1,478.86kg of Webber Naturals’ nutritional tablets for men supplied by Factors Group of Nutritional Companies Inc was confiscated after sample testing on Tuesday detected 0.01g/kg of ethyl p-hydroxybenzoate, traces of which are not permitted in vitamins. The nation allows a limited permissible level of ethyl p-hydroxybenzoate in bean curd skin, dried tofu, soy sauce and non-
carbonated drinks, the FDA said, adding that it has increased random tests of vitamin products from Canada to 20 to 50 percent of shipments from 2 to 10 percent. Other items rejected and destroyed or returned by customs include 2,000kg of basmati rice from India, 27,600kg of fresh pumpkin from China and 780kg of marshmallows from the Philippines, it said.
EDUCATION
Universities to merge
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (Taiwan Tech) and Hwa Hsia University of Technology have agreed to merge, the two institutes said on Tuesday last week. It would be the nation’s first merger between a public and private university, they said in a statement. The plan awaits approval by the Ministry of Education. Hwa Hsia would not enroll students for the 2023-2024 academic year and would close after the 2025-2026 academic year. Students whose graduation is delayed would be eligible to continue their studies under a special program arranged by the ministry, the statement said. To protect the rights and interest of faculty and staff, Hwa Hsia would provide severance and retirement packages upon termination of employment, while Taiwan Tech would hire some of them for project teacher and staff positions over the next four to five years based on employment contracts, it said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
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