■ Crime
Filipinos arrested for murder
Two Filipinos working aboard a fishing vessel based in Taitung County were arrested yesterday on charges of colluding to murder a colleague, police said. Liqe Alvin Barpolapa, 33, and Arellana Joeyilagan, 32, are accused of having stabbed Egot Danny Zalvado, 36, to death with fruit knives in the vessel's cabin early yesterday. According to reports, the two men first subdued Zalvado and then intimidated the other crew members aboard the Yutsaiwang not to try to stop them. Two fishery workers fled and reported the matter to the police. When police officers arrived, the victim had already lost consciousness due to excessive bleeding. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at a nearby hospital.
■ Politics
Legislator-at-large sworn in
The Legislative Yuan yesterday swore in Huang Fung-shih (黃逢時) as a new Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator-at-large. Huang takes over from Lee He-shun (李和順), who lost his seat after resigning from the KMT. Lee cancelled his membership on Oct. 2 in order to run as a regional legislative candidate in Tainan County after the party refused to allow him to do so as a KMT candidate. Huang is the fifth son of the renowned puppeteer Huang Hai-tai (黃海岱) and was a close adviser to former Yunlin County commissioner Chang Jung-wei (張榮味).
■ National Parks
Yangmingshan most popular
Hikers and tourists made 4.06 million visits to Yangmingshan National Park in the first nine months of this year, making it the most popular national park, the Ministry of the Interior reported yesterday. Yangmingshan, named after the ancient Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming (王陽明), is popular mainly because the park can be reached by a 20-minute drive from downtown Taipei, in addition to its volcanic scenery, thick forests and mountain trails, officials said. In its latest survey, the ministry found that Taiwan's six national parks recorded a total of 12.06 million visits from January until last month, with Yangmingshan attracting about 33 percent of visitors. Trailing Yangmingshan was Kenting National Park, which attracted 3.17 million visitors, and Taroko Gorge, with 2.54 million. Kinmen National Park posted 19 percent growth in the number of visitors during the nine-month period, representing the greatest growth in this regard among all six parks.
■ Copyrights
Anti-piracy unit planned
A new police unit specia-lizing in the prevention of intellectual property rights infringements will begin operations with 220 members on the first of next month, Ministry of Economic Affairs officials said yesterday. The decision was made in an inter-ministerial meeting hosted by Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh (何美玥). Since Jan. 1 last year, police officers have been assigned to the task in the form of an ad hoc task force. According to Lu Wen-hsiung (盧文祥), deputy director-general the Intel-lectual Property Office, the task force has produced good results and he hopes Taiwan will perform even better after the new unit begins its work. Lu said the US is expected to announce in December the results of its review on whether to downgrade Taiwan's status or remove the nation completely from the "Special 301" priority watch list.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
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