A man from Taitung County participated in a competition to quit smoking cigarettes and won the top prize of NT$300,000 for his son to build a house, local media reported yesterday.

The recent sighting of a new cluster of the endangered Taiwan cow-tail fir in Taitung County gives a shot in the arm to the efforts to protect the rare plant species, officials in charge of forestation said Monday.

A group of Bunun tribal youngsters from Taitung County southeastern Taiwan shouted “ancestral spirits, we're back” Saturday on the banks of a mountain lake located at the crossroads of the migration route of their ancestors.

The Bureau of National Health Insurance recently discovered that a man collected 1,403 days worth of sleeping pills within six months in Taitung County, according to local media reports.

A group of foreigners had a heated exchange with locals at Lanyu Airport over seats on planes after the airport had been closed for two days due to bad weather.

Five teenage suspects yesterday led local police on a wild chase through a river and up a hill after allegedly stealing gasoline from a station in Taitung.

A vegetable vendor in Taitung, Chen Shu-chu (陳樹菊), age 59, has just been named one of the 48 “Heroes of Philanthropy” in the Asia-Pacific region by Forbes Asia's March issue. Other generous givers on the list are mostly tycoons, entrepreneurs and celebrities.

The second World Indigenous Television Broadcasting Conference (WITBC) will open March 9 at the National Museum of Prehistory in southeastern Taiwan's Taitung County.

Three children in Taitung were found by the police on Feb. 9 after a sick girl, along with her cousins, attempted to reach Taichung for her mother and nearly got lost, local media reported yesterday.

Residents of eastern Taiwan's Taitung County will celebrate the Dec. 30 reopening of the Taiwan Railway South Link Line, which has been closed after incurring damage during Typhoon Morakot in August.