DEFENSE
Soldier killed in accident
A soldier was killed in a towing accident at Tainan Air Base on Sunday night, the military said. The 22-year-old air force corporal, surnamed Chen (陳), lost his balance and fell from a moving tow truck, and was run over by the trailer he was towing at about 8:25pm, the air force said in a statement. Chiu Shou-shun (邱首順), a spokesman for the air base, said that Chen was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Su Shih-yang (蘇世揚), head of Tainan Municipal Hospital’s emergency department, said that Chen had no vital signs upon arrival at the emergency room. He had apparent head injuries, and his skull and limbs were deformed. He was pronounced dead after doctors spent 71 minutes trying to revive him. The air force said it has formed a team to work with prosecutors to investigate the cause of the incident.
CRIME
S Korean’s appeal denied
The Kaohsiung branch of the High Court yesterday denied an appeal by a South Korean man to have his detention order lifted. The man was detained on May 4 on suspicion of killing his South Korean girlfriend. Kaohsiung prosecutors initially sought to detain the man, surnamed Kim, on April 27 on suspicion that he had killed his girlfriend, surnamed Lee. The Kaohsiung District Court initially released Kim on bail of NT$100,000, but banned him from leaving Taiwan. On May 4, the court approved a request by prosecutors to have him detained. Kim and Lee arrived in Kaohsiung on April 22 and checked into a hotel. On the morning of April 25, Kim called hotel staff saying that he had found Lee not breathing. Lee was rushed to hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Prosecutors and forensic specialists said they suspected foul play after finding bruises on Lee’s head, arms and legs. During questioning, Kim said that he got along well with Lee and that her injuries were sustained in a fall. However, prosecutors said that they had found messages that Lee had sent to a friend in South Korea saying that Kim had been physically abusing her for a long time.
CULTURE
Museum hosts rights events
The National Human Rights Museum is to hold online and offline events to mark International Museum Day on Thursday, the New Taipei City-based museum said yesterday. The museum said it would publish a short documentary on its Facebook page on Friday featuring Ankang Reception House, where political dissidents were secretly interrogated during the 1970s and 1980s. On Saturday, the Jingmei White Terror Memorial Park, housed inside the former Jingmei Military Detention Center, would host a seminar organized by Ukrainian Voices, a group of Ukrainians in Taiwan. The seminar is to bring together journalists and humanitarian volunteers to share Ukrainians’ experiences of exile and resistance following Russia’s invasion of their country. The park is also to host an exhibition titled “When Temporary Becomes the Ordinary: Days of War for Ukrainian Women” until Nov. 21. The exhibition documents the war in Ukraine from the perspectives of local women. The museum’s Green Island White Terror Memorial Park is to host an exhibition titled “Listening to the Overtones of Fissures” from tomorrow until Sept. 17 as part of the Green Island Human Rights Art Festival.
COLLABORATION: As TSMC is building an advanced wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, it needs to build a comprehensive supply chain in Europe, Joseph Wu said Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech Republic to build a semiconductor cluster in the European country, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Friday. Wu, who led a Taiwanese delegation at the annual GLOBSEC Forum held in Prague from Friday to today, said in a news conference that Taiwan seeks to foster cooperation between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and its counterparts in Czechia. Such cooperation is expected to transform the country into one of the most important semiconductor clusters in Europe over the next three to five years, he added. As TSMC is building an advanced
A joint declaration by Pacific leaders was reissued yesterday morning with mentions of Taiwan removed after China slammed an earlier version as a “mistake” that “must be corrected.” After five days of talks in Tonga, a “cleared” communique was released on Friday that reaffirmed a 30-year-old agreement allowing Taiwan to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). However, the wording immediately raised the ire of Chinese diplomats, who piled pressure on Pacific leaders to amend the document. The forum reissued the communique without explanation yesterday morning, conspicuously deleting the paragraph concerning the bloc’s “relations with Taiwan.” “It must be a
A tropical depression in waters east of the Philippines could develop into a tropical storm as soon as today and bring rainfall as it approaches, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, while issuing heat warnings for 14 cities and counties. Weather model simulations show that there are still considerable differences in the path that the tropical depression is projected to take. It might pass through the Bashi Channel to the South China Sea or turn northeast and move toward the sea south of Japan, CWA forecaster Yeh Chih-chun (葉致均) said, adding that the uncertainty of its movement is still high,
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
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