■ SOCIETY
Nurse commits suicide
A nurse at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Keelung succumbed to the pressure of mounting credit card debts and committed suicide on Friday, police said yesterday. Tsai Yu-ting (蔡玉婷) died by draining her own blood, they said. Her younger sister found her body in bed with a blood transfusion pipe and a bucket full of blood at her side. Tsai said in a suicide note that when her father, a fishing boat owner, ran up heavy debts several years ago, she borrowed large sums of money from a bank to help him, but did not tell him where the money came from. After years of struggling to pay the debts with her limited salary at the hospital, she ended her life to settle the debts once and for all, the note said. Police said statistics show that on average, 40 people committed suicide every month because of heavy credit card debts between 2006 and last year.
■POLITICS
DPP pans Ma over index dip
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus said yesterday the stock market’s 5 percent, or 460.67 points, drop last week was a reflection of the public’s lack of confidence in President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) policies and capabilities. “The TAIEX dropped approximately 5 percent within the past five business days. An estimated NT$1.17 trillion [US$39 billion] vaporized just like that. Although economics was a major issue in Ma’s campaign [for office], it is obvious that he has failed to convince the public in that regard,” a press release by the DPP caucus read. As the central government plans to raise gas and utilities prices, the caucus warned that the situation could go from bad to worse and the TAIEX could continue to decline, reflecting investors’ disappointment with and lack of confidence in the new government.
■CULTURE
Confucius camp in August
Local and foreign youths, aged 15 to 17, are invited to participate in the annual Confucius rite of passage camp hosted by Tainan City Government, the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) said yesterday. The camp aims to help young people learn more about the values of gratitude, responsibility and independence, TECRO said. All participants will receive a certificate of completion at the end of the camp, which will run from Aug. 2 to Aug. 7. The entire camp will be conducted in Mandarin and participants would be responsible for their own transportation. Registration ends on July 15. Application forms can be downloaded from the TECRO cultural division Web site at www.moetwdc.org/English/index.html.
■ARTS
Sculptors in German show
Two award-winning Taiwanese woodcarving artists have been invited to demonstrate their creative skills at a workshop held alongside the 2008 International Woodsculptor Symposium in Annaberg-Buchholz, a town in the Free State of Saxony in Germany, from June 14 to June 21. Chen De-Lung (陳德隆) and Tseng An-kuo (曾安國), who both have their own studios in Sanyi (三義) — a small town in Miaoli County renowned for its woodcarving industry — will compete with 23 other wood sculptors from Germany and six other countries in the creative camp called “Wood Sculptors Create Great Works.” Chen’s specialty is carving historical figures, animals and insects, while Tseng is an expert in carving Buddha statues, orchid flowers and female figures. Both of them have won numerous awards in domestic competitions since 1992.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
The Civil Aviation Administration yesterday said that it is considering punishments for China Airlines (CAL) and Starlux Airlines for making hard landings and overworking their cabin crew when the nation was hit by Typhoon Kong-rey in October last year. The civil aviation authority launched an investigation after media reported that many airlines were forced to divert their flights to different airports or go around after failing to land when the typhoon affected the nation on Oct. 30 and 31 last year. The agency reviewed 503 flights dispatched by Taiwanese airlines during those two days, as well as weather data, flight hours
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Three people have had their citizenship revoked after authorities confirmed that they hold Chinese ID cards, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said yesterday. Two of the three people were featured in a recent video about Beijing’s “united front” tactics by YouTuber Pa Chiung (八炯) and Taiwanese rapper Chen Po-yuan (陳柏源), including Su Shi-en (蘇士恩), who displayed a Chinese ID card in the video, and taekwondo athlete Lee Tung-hsien (李東憲), who mentioned he had obtained a Chinese ID card in a telephone call with Chen, Liang told the council’s weekly news conference. Lee, who reportedly worked in
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