SOCIETY
Students shine at Robofest
Students from Taiwan won four categories at the Robofest World Championship in the US. They were competing against teams that qualified for the event from regional competitions in 21 other countries and nine US states. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office said on Facebook yesterday said that Taiwanese students won the most popular award in the Exhibition Junior category, and first place in the Exhibition Senior and Game Senior categories. They also won the Junior Bottle Sumo category, in which teams of one robot try to push each other or a bottle off a platform. Twelve Taiwanese teams, comprising nearly 50 students from elementary school upward, participated in the competition at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago
POLITICS
Tsai awards 13 top officials
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday conferred medals on Vice President William Lai (賴清德) and 12 other officials at the Presidential Office, in recognition of their hard work, which she said had left a better Taiwan for the world. Tsai, set to complete her second presidential term on Monday next week, awarded Lai, the president-elect, the Order of Dr Sun Yat-sen with Grand Cordon and the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon. Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) was awarded the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon. Vice Premier Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦), Presidential Office Secretary-General Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and Examination Yuan Secretary-General Liu Chien-sin (劉建忻) were honored with the Order of Brilliant Star with Special Grand Cordon. Vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正), Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) and Stanley Kao (高碩泰), a former top envoy to the US, were among those who received the Order of Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago
CRIME
Triple murder suspect held
The New Taipei District Court yesterday approved a request by prosecutors to detain and hold incommunicado a man suspected of murdering his wife, stepson and mother-in-law in the city’s Sanchong District (三重). The 24-year-old suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was detained due to the severity of the case and the risk that he could try to flee or destroy evidence. Chang was arrested in Taichung on Sunday after his 30-year-old wife, surnamed Chen (陳), her 69-year-old mother, surnamed Liu (劉), and his three-year-old stepson were found dead at a residence on Saturday night, police said. A woman identified as Liu’s oldest daughter said she was unable to contact her mother for several days, police said. Police said Chang admitted during questioning that he had murdered them over a financial dispute.
SOCIETY
Indonesians wed en masse
Twenty-nine Indonesian couples on Sunday took part in a mass wedding event in Taipei that was held to reduce the number of unregistered marriages among Indonesians in Taiwan. After attending a ceremony of about 20 minutes featuring readings from the Koran, each couple spent 15 minutes processing documents before receiving an official marriage certificate issued by the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs. Sunday’s event was the third mass wedding event organized by the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office to Taipei since the beginning of last year.
The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts yesterday apologized for forbidding children from copying paintings by freehand drawing, saying it welcomes visitors to make sketches of paintings on drawing tablets or sketchpads. The museum issued the remark after a museumgoer nicknamed “Mickeyelk Gesner” on Thursday posted on Facebook that her son had been sketching a painting by Pablo Picasso on a tablet computer at the exhibition “Capturing the Moment” on Wednesday when a museum worker told him to stop drawing. “The staff told us, ‘Only taking photos is allowed. No copying. This is a rule,’” she quoted the worker as saying. Physician Lee Chia-yan
ACCESS DENIAL: Beijing would likely take formation in the Philippine Sea, outside Taipei’s missile range, while its forces on the east would be a deterrent to foreign aid China is increasingly likely to employ a strategy of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) around Taiwan, which would use three carrier groups, a report from the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. When China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, is completed next year, China would have three carriers, which would likely be used to surround Taiwan and implement an A2/AD strategy, it said, adding that efforts to strengthen China’s two other carriers — the Liaoning and the Shandong — appear to corroborate this. In the quarterly report, the council cited declassified documents from the Ministry of National Defense that categorized China’s carriers as
China’s travel booking platform ctrip.com has removed the Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Shanghai from its listings after the chain’s Paris venue banned the Chinese national flag during the 2024 Summer Olympics, sparking an Internet furor. The story — which had garnered 110 million views on Sina Weibo — had since been removed from the platform’s list of most popular posts. On Monday, a Chinese influencer known as Instructor Zhang (張教官) accused the Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Paris of refusing his request for the Chinese flag to be displayed at the venue in a video uploaded to TikTok. A person purported to be a
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 5:06pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The earthquake occurred offshore, 38.3km south-southeast of Yilan County Hall, at a depth of 9km, CWA data showed. The quake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, was highest in parts of Yilan County, where it measured a “weak 5” on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale. The temblor recorded an intensity of 4 in parts of Hualien, Taoyuan and New Taipei, and 3 in parts of Taichung, Nantou, Taipei, Hsinchu and Miaoli, CWA data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage