SOCIETY
Taipei to help man’s family
The Taipei Public Works Department said it would help the family of a motorcyclist who was struck and killed by a falling tree on Wednesday make a compensation claim under a city insurance policy. The 67-year-old man, surnamed Lin (林), was seriously injured when a roadside tree fell on top of him as he rode along Zhongshan N Road on Wednesday morning. He was found without vital signs and later pronounced dead at Mackay Memorial Hospital. The department said late on Wednesday that it had sent officials to the hospital to console the man’s family and to offer its help in applying for compensation. Under a roadside tree insurance policy taken out by the city, it said, the man’s family is eligible to receive NT$15,000 (US$471) as consolation and, following relevant authorizations, compensation of NT$6 million.
POLITICS
Parris Chang dies at 86
Former National Security Council (NSC) deputy secretary-general Parris Chang (張旭成), who also served as a four-term legislator of the Democratic Progressive Party, has died at the age of 86. His wife, Lin Hsiu-chu (林秀菊), said on Wednesday that Chang passed away on Saturday last week after being hospitalized in April due to complications related to COVID-19. Born in Chiayi County in 1936, Chang left Taiwan in the 1960s to pursue graduate education in the US, later obtaining a doctorate in political science from Columbia University and settling in the country as a dual citizen. After returning to Taiwan in the 1990s, he served in the Legislative Yuan representing overseas citizens from 1993 to 2004 and as NSC deputy secretary-general from 2004 to 2006. Lin said that his legacy would be honored at a ceremony in Taipei on Sept. 23.
TRANSPORTATION
Taipei MRT launches feature
The mobile app for the Taipei MRT has added a new feature that makes it easier for passengers to locate each other when traveling on MRT trains, Taipei Rapid Transit Co said. The “train meet-ups (相約列車)” feature on the Taipei MRT Go app, which is only available in Mandarin, allows passengers to share their train information with friends via social media, the company said in a press release last month. Passengers are required to enter the car number and door number which are located near the door inside each car before sharing a message, which allows the app to locate the train on a real-time MRT map for message recipients.
SOCIETY
Police clarify ‘bat’ case
The Taitung Police Bureau on Thursday defended its handling of a recent incident in which a bat-wielding man confronted a foreign motorcyclist in an apparent road rage incident. In a Reddit post earlier this week, a user going by the name Aggro_Hamham shared a video and described a motorcycle trip from Taitung to Hualien, in which, after he honked at a truck that tried to move into his lane, the driver “brake checked” him and threatened him with a baseball bat. Chang Kuan-hao (張冠?) from Taitung Police Bureau’s Taitung Precinct on Thursday pushed back at online criticism of the department. He said both parties were brought to an area police station, where the driver of the truck apologized for his actions, which the motorcyclist accepted. Chang said police only learned the driver had brandished a baseball bat on Monday — the day after it happened — when the video was posted online. The investigation into the case remains open, Chang said.
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 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
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
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