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.
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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