■ 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.
The German city of Hamburg on Oct. 14 named a bridge “Kaohsiung-Brucke” after the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. The footbridge, formerly known as F566, is to the east of the Speicherstadt, the world’s largest warehouse district, and connects the Dar-es-Salaam-Platz to the Brooktorpromenade near the Port of Hamburg on the Elbe River. Timo Fischer, a Free Democratic Party member of the Hamburg-Mitte District Assembly, in May last year proposed the name change with support from members of the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union. Kaohsiung and Hamburg in 1999 inked a sister city agreement, but despite more than a quarter-century of
Taiwanese officials are courting podcasters and influencers aligned with US President Donald Trump as they grow more worried the US leader could undermine Taiwanese interests in talks with China, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has said Taiwan would likely be on the agenda when he is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) next week in a bid to resolve persistent trade tensions. China has asked the White House to officially declare it “opposes” Taiwanese independence, Bloomberg reported last month, a concession that would mark a major diplomatic win for Beijing. President William Lai (賴清德) and his top officials
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday expressed “grave concerns” after Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) reiterated the city-state’s opposition to “Taiwanese independence” during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強). In Singapore on Saturday, Wong and Li discussed cross-strait developments, the Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “Prime Minister Wong reiterated that Singapore has a clear and consistent ‘one China’ policy and is opposed to Taiwan independence,” it said. MOFA responded that it is an objective fact and a common understanding shared by many that the Republic of China (ROC) is an independent, sovereign nation, with world-leading
‘ONE CHINA’: A statement that Berlin decides its own China policy did not seem to sit well with Beijing, which offered only one meeting with the German official German Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul’s trip to China has been canceled, a spokesperson for his ministry said yesterday, amid rising tensions between the two nations, including over Taiwan. Wadephul had planned to address Chinese curbs on rare earths during his visit, but his comments about Berlin deciding on the “design” of its “one China” policy ahead of the trip appear to have rankled China. Asked about Wadephul’s comments, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) said the “one China principle” has “no room for any self-definition.” In the interview published on Thursday, Wadephul said he would urge China to
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