The Taipei District Court yesterday awarded NT$5.2 million to Winston Wang (王文洋), chairman of the Hung Jen Group (宏仁集團), in compensation for damage to his reputation resulting from allegations of sexual impropriety.
Wang, son of Formosa Plastics Chairman Wang Yung-ching (王永慶), won the civil suit yesterday against a woman who had claimed to have been Wang's mistress and to have had a child by him.
According to the court, the woman, Jo Jo Lin (林爰君) approached Wang in 1996 pretending to be a wealthy businesswoman interested in investing Wang's Hung Jen Group.
Days after they signed some business contracts, Lin made phone calls to the group and claimed Wang had got her pregnant. She then asked Wang to give her financial support or she would expose the affair to the media.
Though he denied the relationship, Wang gave the woman NT$3.2 million in 1998 for fear that bad media publicity would damage the image of his business which was just beginning to take off.
However, Lin still went on TV to speak of her "relationship" with Wang and the baby she claimed to have had by him.
Wang then took the case to court, charging the woman with blackmail and requesting NT$20 million in compensation for damage to his reputation.
The criminal court found Lin guilty of blackmail last December and sentenced her to 17 months jail. Lin was supposed to begin serving her sentence in March but went into hiding instead.
In the civil decision handed down yesterday, the court decided Lin must pay NT$5.2 million in damages for injuries to Wang's character.
The Taipei MRT is open all night tonight following New Year’s Eve festivities, and is offering free rides from nearby Green Line stations. Taipei’s 2025 New Year’s Eve celebrations kick off at Taipei City Hall Square tonight, with performances from the boy band Energy, the South Korean girl group Apink, and singers Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Faith Yang (楊乃文). Taipei 101’s annual New Year’s firework display follows at midnight, themed around Taiwan’s Premier12 baseball championship. Estimates say there will be about 200,000 people in attendance, which is more than usual as this year’s celebrations overlap with A-mei’s (張惠妹) concert at Taipei Dome. There are
LOOKING FOR WHEELS: The military is seeking 8x8 single-chassis vehicles to test the new missile and potentially replace the nation’s existing launch vehicles, the source said Taiwan is developing a hypersonic missile based on the Ching Tien (擎天) supersonic cruise missile, and a Czech-made truck has been tentatively selected as its launch vehicle, a source said yesterday. The Ching Tien, formerly known as Yun Feng (雲峰, “Cloud Peak”), is a domestically developed missile with a range of 1,200km to 2,000km being deployed in casemate-type positions as of last month, an official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The hypersonic missile to be derived from the Ching Tien would feature improved range and a mobile launch platform, while the latter would most likely be a 12x12 single chassis
UP AND DOWN: The route would include a 16.4km underground section from Zuoying to Fongshan and a 9.5km elevated part from Fongshan to Pingtung Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday confirmed a project to extend the high-speed rail (HSR) to Pingtung County through Kaohsiung. Cho made the announcement at a ceremony commemorating the completion of a dome at Kaohsiung Main Station. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications approved the HSR expansion in 2019 using a route that branches off a line from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District (左營). The project was ultimately delayed due to a lack of support for the route. The Zuoying route would have trains stop at the Zuoying Station and return to a junction before traveling southward to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝).
Parts of the nation, including in the south, could experience temperatures as low as 7°C early tomorrow morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. A strong continental cold air mass coupled with the effect of radiative cooling would bring cold weather to several northern cities and counties, and could even affect areas as far south as Tainan early tomorrow, the CWA said. Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan, and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties would experience temperatures below 10°C until this evening, according to cold surge advisories issued by the weather agency. The weather across the nation is forecast to remain
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