Mon, Jul 03, 2023 page3

• Taiwan News Quick Take

  • Staff writer, with agencies
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  SOCIETY

  Fire breaks out at plant

  A fire broke out at a textile factory in Taoyuan yesterday, killing two men, the fire department said. The department was alerted at 9:39am and dispatched 84 firefighters and 34 vehicles to the site, it said. The men were found at 11:49am near the entrance to the sixth floor. They apparently had suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, it said, adding that they were rushed to hospital, where they were declared dead. At 10:09am, firefighters rescued an employee, surnamed Chen (陳), who was conscious and had sustained only minor injuries when he was also on the sixth floor, it said. While it remains unclear what caused the fire, the initial investigations found that it broke out on the fourth floor, spread upward and trapped three of the four men who were in the building, it said.

  DIPLOMACY

  >Senior US official visits

  A senior US official charged with handling ties with APEC last week visited Taiwan for talks on his country’s plans to host the grouping this year, the American Institute in Taiwan said in a statement on Friday. US senior official for APEC Matt Murray visited Taiwan on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss with senior officials issues related to APEC and the US-Taiwan economic relationship, the statement said. Murray discussed topics such as high-level meetings set for next month in Seattle on disaster preparedness, food security, health, energy, women and the economy, and small and medium enterprises, it added. It did not say whom he had met while in Taiwan. The APEC leaders’ summit is to take place in San Francisco in November.

  SOCIETY

  New bus app launched

  Taipei is to set up more devices by the end of this year to help people with visual impairments cross roads and get on buses more safely and easily, the city’s Department of Transportation last week said. It launched a mobile app in 2021 with those functions. The app, which has a high-contrast interface with oversized characters and audio functions, notifies users if they are at intersections and of the traffic light status. The app tells users at a bus stop when the bus they want to catch is coming, and notifies bus drivers that the app user wants to take their bus. By the end of the year, the app would be used for 983 buses on about 29 routes, accounting for 28 percent of all Taipei buses, the department said, adding that the service could be accessed at all bus stops on bus-only lanes in the city.

  CRIME

  Fraud suspects arrested

  A fugitive Taiwanese couple indicted over a NT$4 billion (US$128.85 million) investment fraud more than 20 years ago was arrested in Bangkok last week, Thai police said. Chen Chih-tsan (陳智燦), 64, and his wife Liu Mei-hsueh (劉美雪), 57, who fled Taiwan in 2001, were accused of soliciting investments for the fictitious “Richmond Bank” — a supposed subsidiary of the similarly nonexistent “Europe Geneva Corporation,” Thai police said on Wednesday. The couple fled Taiwan after telling more than 4,000 of their investors that the fake firm’s bank accounts in Latvia had been frozen, and that the firm was shutting down, the police said. After a Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau probe found that neither Richmond Bank nor Europe Geneva Corporation existed, Chen and Liu were indicted for fraud by the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office on July 9, 2002. Thai police said the couple changed their names before entering Thailand in July 2018 using Belizean passports.
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