TRAFFIC
Man hit by tour bus dies
A 92-year-old man has died after being struck by a tour bus as he legally crossed an intersection in Hualien on Saturday, local authorities said. The accident occurred as the man, surnamed Hsieh (謝), was crossing Huadao Road at its intersection with Jhongmei Road in Hualien City at about 8am, the Hualien County Police Bureau said, adding that as Hsieh was crossing, a tour bus moving in the same direction made a left turn on a green light and hit him. Hsieh sustained brain bleeding and broken ribs from the impact, and at one point lost vital signs, the Hualien County Fire Department said. Despite efforts to save him, Hsieh passed away at a hospital at about 7pm on Saturday. The 47-year-old driver of the tour bus, surnamed Wu (吳), had a valid driver’s license and passed a field sobriety test. He told investigators he had not seen Hsieh because he had been in the vehicle’s “blind spot.” Police said they were examining surveillance video footage from the intersection and nearby shops to determine what exactly had happened. Under the Road Traffic Management and Penalty Act (道路交通管理處罰條例), a driver who injures or causes the death of a pedestrian at a crosswalk after failing to yield may face a fine of NT$7,200 to NT$36,000 and have their driver’s license revoked.
SOCIETY
Zookeepers to get a raise
The government has plans to raise the monthly hazard pay allowance for zookeepers of public zoos beginning next year, a Cabinet official said on Saturday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the raise in allowance for zookeepers would range from NT$3,000 to NT$5,000, depending on the type of animal they tend to. In May, a trade union representing zookeepers at the Taipei Zoo staged a protest demanding better pay, saying their wages had remained stagnant in the past 30 years. The incident led the Taipei Zoo to discuss the issue with the Cabinet’s Directorate-General of Personnel Administration, and the two sides agreed to raise the hazard pay allowance as a way to increase wages. On Saturday, the official said the plan has since been expanded to cover not only Taipei Zoo’s keepers, but also those working at other government-operated animal parks, including the Hsinchu Zoo, the Shoushan Zoo in Kaohsiung, and the Fonghuanggu Bird and Ecology Park in Nantou County.
SOCIETY
Hualien fire kills teen
A fire in Hualien County yesterday killed one senior-high school student, left three people with respiratory injuries and damaged eight buildings, the Hualien County Fire Department said. An 18-year-old boy, surnamed Chiang (江), was found without vital signs on the second floor of a two-story building, the department said. Chiang was likely one of the people who reported the fire to the authorities at about 12:19am, but failed to escape after his phone call was cut off just minutes after connecting, it said. Chiang’s father and sister were rescued, and his grandparents managed to escape on their own, while his mother was out of the country, the department said. Due to strong winds that fanned the flames, the fire spread to seven other buildings, leaving a man and a woman with respiratory injuries on the rooftop of a building, and another man also choked up at another building, it said. The department’s more than 20 firefighters had the fire under control in about 30 minutes after it received the call. The exact cause of the fire, which some residents reported started in the garage of Chiang’s home on the first floor, is still being investigated.
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
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
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
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