A China Airlines (CAL) flight from Beijing to Taipei was delayed by nearly two hours yesterday after a passenger claimed while boarding that he had a bomb in his luggage.
Flight CI512, originally scheduled to depart Beijing at 12:25pm, took off from Beijing Capital International Airport at about 2:20pm after further security checks were conducted and no explosive device was found, CAL authorities in Taipei said.
The flight, with 351 passengers on board, arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5:15pm.
According to the carrier’s office in Beijing, a Chinese man, aged 70, who is a US passport holder, was unhappy that the flight had been delayed because of heavy traffic at Beijing airport.
The man, surnamed Zhang (張), said while taking his first-class seat that he was carrying a bomb in his luggage.
The attendants immediately alerted the captain.
In response, airport authorities ordered all luggage — not only that belonging to Zhang and his wife — to be removed from the aircraft for safety checks.
The couple were ordered to disembark from the aircraft and detained for questioning. The CAL flight then departed for Taipei.
Sean Lien (連勝文), a son of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), and his wife were among the passengers. Sean Lien survived a gunshot wound to the face at an election rally in then-Taipei County in November last year.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
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
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS