A man in his 40s died early yesterday after he was attacked by a swarm of hornets when guiding a group of high-school and university students on a hike on a section of the Jinshuiying Old Trail in Taitung County the previous day.
Taitung Mackay Memorial Hospital said the 41-year-old, identified as Hung Wei-yen (洪偉彥), who sustained more than 50 stings on his back, was pronounced dead at about 2am after efforts to resuscitate him failed.
On Thursday afternoon, Hung and the group of 20 students were 2.5km away from the trail exit near the indigenous village of Qaljapang in Dawu Township (大武) when they encountered a hornet nest, the Taitung County Fire Department said.
Photo from Legislator Chung Chia-pin’s Facebook page
All of the students made it past the nest, but two sustained minor injuries due to stings and were taken to a hospital for treatment.
The students said that after reaching a safe distance they immediately contacted the fire department for help because they were unable to get back to Hung, who was lying on the ground and was surrounded by hornets.
Hung had instructed the students to run past the nest quickly while he stayed behind to try to shoo the insects away, the students said.
The department’s rescue team said they reached Hung at about 7pm and injected him with three doses of a cardiac stimulant as he was unable to move.
Despite having a low blood oxygen level, Hung was still conscious when he was taken to the Dawu Health Center, rescuers said.
However, his condition quickly deteriorated, and he was transferred to Mackay hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The group began hiking the trail from the Pingtung side and were supposed to end their hike at about 6pm in Taitung, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) said.
Hung was the deputy chief of Chung’s service office in Pingtung who volunteered to take the students on the trip.
Thursday’s hike was part of an event organized by Chung’s charitable education foundation, which organizes field trips for local students to reward them for having good grades.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back