■ TRANSPORTATION
Freeway closing for drill
The Chiang Wei-shui Freeway (Freeway No. 5) linking Taipei with Ilan will be closed for five hours tomorrow starting at 9pm between Taipei County’s Shihding Township (石碇) and Ilan County’s Toucheng Township (頭城) for an emergency rescue drill, the Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau said yesterday. The section of the freeway to be closed for the firefighting and emergency rescue drills will include the full length of the 12.9km Hsuehshan Tunnel. Officials said the drill was a regular exercise to train response units in case of an emergency in the tunnel. They said the exercise would simulate an operation involving fire brigades and ambulance workers from Taipei and Ilan counties responding to a fire in the tunnel caused by a bus rear-ending another bus. Motorists traveling in either direction between Taipei and Ilan are advised to use other roads during the drill, the officials said.
■CRIME
Monk sentenced to jail
A Buddhist monk has been sentenced to 80 days in jail for repeated indecent exposure, a newspaper reported yesterday. Chen Poh-ming (陳博銘), 42, lifted his yellow monk’s robe and masturbated in front of a female tour guide on Feb. 16 while visiting the Paper Museum in Puli (埔里), Nantou County, the United Daily News reported. The shocked guide alerted police, who arrested him. Chen was released on bail the same day, but as he was riding a bus home, he masturbated in front of a woman passenger. The driver drove the bus directly to a police station, where Chen was arrested again. On Monday, the Nantou County District Court sentenced Chen to 80 days in jail.
■CRIME
Pirated goods seized
The National Police Agency has seized goods with a combined market value of NT$704 million (US$23.1 million) in 547 cases of intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement and arrested 635 suspects in its second crackdown this year, an agency official said yesterday. Police scoured marketplaces, shopping malls, night markets, factories, warehouses and containers and searched the Internet in a crackdown on the manufacturing, sale and smuggling of counterfeit and pirated goods between Monday and Thursday last week, the official said. He urged the public to support the agency’s efforts by rejecting counterfeit goods to protect the rights of copyright and trademark owners. He also encouraged the public to report crimes related to counterfeiting and piracy.
■CULTURE
Chiayi to host fireworks
The central government’s fireworks display in celebration of Double Ten National Day will take place in Chiayi City this year, Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) said yesterday. Siew, a native of Chiayi, made the announcement while attending a ceremony held by the Chiayi City Government to mark the 26th anniversary of the city’s status upgrade. Speaking as a guest of Chiayi Mayor Huang Ming-hui (黃敏惠), Siew described the Oct. 10 fireworks show as “a major international event” that will introduce Chiayi to the world by attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors, including tens of thousands of tourists from China and other countries to watch the festivities. It will be the first National Day fireworks show to be staged in Chiayi, Huang said, inviting the public to share in the celebrations.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
NUMBERs IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
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