Amid recent reports of a bullet-planting scandal at an international airport in the Philippines, Taiwanese travelers to the Southeast Asian country have been urged to remain calm if they fall victim to similar scams.
Travel Agent Association of Taiwan secretary-general Roget Hsu (許高慶) said he heard of similar cases about 20 years ago and advised travelers to remain calm if something like that happened to them.
It is safer to pay the money demanded by con artists to avoid getting stuck, Hsu said, adding that people should also collect any evidence they can at the same time and make a report to Philippine authorities afterward.
He also urged travelers never to agree to carry items or luggage for strangers at airports.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III has ordered a thorough investigation into the alleged bullet-planting scam at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila.
At least nine travelers, including some from the US and Japan, were over the past two months reportedly targets of an extortion scam involving security staff planting bullets in their luggage, according to a report by Philippine media outlet ABS-CBN.
Travelers were then told to pay a fee to persuade staff to “turn a blind” eye, as it is illegal in the Philippines to possess live ammunition.
Some of them paid the money and were able to leave the airport safely, while there have been cases in which travelers have been detained for several days, it reported.
The scam at Manila’s international airport has created an atmosphere of fear among travelers to the Philippines.
Amid the scandal, many travelers have been taking precautionary measures, such as sealing their bags with plastic or wrapping their luggage with masking tape.
Given an approaching general election in the Philippines, some have speculated that the scam is aimed at discrediting the Aquino administration.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
President William Lai (賴清德) today called for greater mutual aid between Taiwan and Japan in a post commemorating the 15th anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, saying that “true friendship reveals itself in hardship.” The magnitude 9 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in Japan, and the ensuing tsunami left 18,500 people dead or unaccounted for, and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. It was the world's worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Japan and Taiwan share a close bond built on mutual aid and trust, Lai said on Facebook, adding that he hopes they would
RSS