■Health insurance
DOH seeks budget increase
A top health official said yesterday if the Department of Health (DOH) can obtain a sufficient budget for the national health insurance program, it will offer preferential health premiums to 300,000 people. DOH Director-General Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) also said the department planned to send a proposal to the legislature aimed at helping the poor pay overdue health premiums. The proposal would help nearly 100,000 people pay their overdue premiums for the past five years and then include them into the national health insurance program after their overdue fees are paid. The budget for the proposal amounts to more than NT$100 million, according to the Bureau of National Health Insurance.
■ Indonesia
Police arrest hijack suspects
Indonesian police have arrested nine suspects in connection with the hijacking of a Taiwanese fishing boat off the coast of North Sulawesi last year, news reports said yesterday. "They were all arrested in Sorong, Papua, on Jan. 11 and Jan. 12," spokesman for the North Sulawesi police Adjunct Senior Commissioner Bambang Purnomo told the state-run Antara news agency. The suspects allegedly hijacked the MV Kua Sheun No. 66 which was carrying 600 tonnes of fish in the waters off the islands of Tagulandang and Biarto, North Sulawesi, on Dec. 27. Purnom said local police, in cooperation with the Sorong Police, were still searching for three more hijackers.
■ Hong Kong
Fat activists seek apology
A consumer protection group asked Hong Kong's Dragonair yesterday to apologize to a 180kg woman who was not allowed to board a flight and to provide her with compensation. The woman, identified only by her last name, Hsieh, lodged a complaint with the Consumers' Foundation of Taiwan following last month's incident. She was not allowed to take a Dragonair flight to Shanghai via Hong Kong on the grounds that a safe seat belt was unavailable because of her size. Cheng Jen-hung, secretary-general of the consumer protection foundation, said Dragonair was in violation of consumers' rights. "It is a serious violation of human rights and personal dignity to reject a passenger because she is overweight," Cheng said.
■ Cross-strait issues
Illegal immigrants nabbed
Twenty-eight Chinese citizens were caught aboard two Taiwanese fishing vessels off Yehliu and Pahtouzi fishing ports early yesterday trying to sneak into Taiwan, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) reported. Working on a tip-off, personnel from the CGA Northern Taiwan Patrol Center raided the Yu Feng 168, which had just anchored off Yehliu, and nabbed 16 Chinese women, all of them young and dressed in "smart, revealing outfits." Earlier the group patrol raided the Fu Chi, which was approaching the mouth of the Lanyangchi River and nabbed another three Chinese men and nine teenaged women. Almost all the Chinese claimed to have paid NT$125,000 each to be smuggled into Taiwan to seek employment. They all also carried playing cards, which the police believe were used as sequence numbers guiding the order in which they were to have been transported after making landfall. The skippers of the vessels, along with the illegal immigrants, were taken into police custody for questioning.
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