The number of gun crimes handled by law enforcement agencies around the country totaled 331 in the first nine months of this year, down by 30 percent, or 135 cases, from the year before, Ministry of the Interior officials said yesterday.
Most of the cases involved robbery, homicide, extortion, kidnapping, offenses against personal liberty and rape or assault and battery, in that order, ministry officials said.
Of the total, 281 were solved with the arrests of the perpetrators, marking a success rate of 85 percent -- a figure that is 14 percent higher than the same period last year, the officials noted.
One hundred and fifty cases, or 45 percent, involved robbery and 114 involved homicide, they added.
Taipei County had the largest number of crimes involving fire-arms in the January to September period, with 73 cases, followed by Taoyuan County, with 35 cases and Pingtung County, with 22 cases. Taipei and Kaohsiung cities each had 18 cases.
Police statistics show that most of the weapons and ammunition seized during crackdowns were from Taipei City and Taichung City. A total of 1,850 guns of various types were seized in the January to September period, down roughly 20 percent year-on-year. Locally made or modified guns made up the bulk of those confiscated, the statistics show.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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