HISTORY
Chiang documents released
More than 263,000 declassified documents pertaining to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) are now available online, Academia Historica said yesterday. The files are accessible on the institution’s archive (ahonline.drnh.gov.tw), it said in a statement. The files, 61.65 percent of which were formerly listed as confidential, were uploaded to the archive in several batches between January and last month after being individually reviewed between August and December last year. They represent 98.8 percent of all existing documents related to Chiang, the institute said. The remainder not yet online includes some that cannot be posted due to copyright restrictions (0.74 percent) and some that are restricted due to privacy concerns (0.44 percent), while the rest (0.02 percent) must remain permanently confidential to protect intelligence sources, it said.
NATIONAL DEFENSE
Frigates arriving soon
Two Perry-class guided missile frigates purchased from the US are expected to arrive in Kaohsiung on Saturday and be commissioned into service next year, military sources said yesterday. The two frigates, built in the 1980s, were formally transferred to the Republic of China Navy at a ceremony on March 9 in South Carolina. Scheduled to arrive at Zuoying Military Harbor, they are to join the navy’s 146th fleet, which is based on Penghu and is responsible for patrolling the Taiwan Strait, the sources said. Weapons system testing and personnel training will be conducted before the two frigates are formally commissioned into service, the navy has said, adding that a commissioning ceremony has been scheduled for July next year.
CRIME
Illegal job brokers arrested
An Indonesian woman and 19 others were arrested on Monday in New Taipei City on suspicion of illegally brokering jobs for illegal workers and remitting funds overseas. National Immigration Agency officials said the woman, who runs a store specializing in products from Indonesia, was suspected of sending Indonesians who had overstayed their visas to work in hospitals as nurses and cleaners. Some of them also work in the woman’s restaurant or as prostitutes, according to officials with an agency task force investigating a human trafficking ring suspected of using drugs to control Indonesian sex workers. The woman and her brother, both surnamed Wang (王), were among eight people arrested in connection with the task force’s investigation. After searching several locations, the task force also arrested 11 illegal workers and another foreign national whose visa had expired, the officials said. They said the Indonesian store remits an average of NT$100,000 (US$3,305) to Indonesia per day, or about NT$36.5 million a year.
TOURISM
Cross-strait Kinmen walk set
A cross-strait walk will be held in Kinmen on Saturday as part of efforts to promote tourism in the outlying island group, the county government said yesterday. Five hundred Chinese visitors from Xiamen and 200 Kinmen residents are expected to take part in the 6km walk, the Kinmen Association of Travel Agents said. The walk will start at Zhaishan Tunnel (翟山坑道) at 1pm and take the participants to a number of attractions before returning to the tunnel, the Kinmen Tourism Department said. The event has been organized by the department, Xiamen’s Tourism Development Commission and travel agents from the two sides.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Detention extended
A Chinese man accused of espionage is to be detained for another two months while prosecutors continue their investigation, the Taipei District Court ruled on Monday. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office asked for more time, saying that 29-year-old Zhou Hongxu (周泓旭) was likely to flee the country or collude to destroy evidence. Zhou, from Liaoning Province, was enrolled in an MBA program at National Chengchi University in Taipei from 2012 until last year. He returned to Taiwan in February to work as a management investor. He was detained on March 10 for allegedly trying to gather classified information from schools and government offices. Investigators said that Zhou was allegedly in contact with a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, whom he had met when a student, and was trying to persuade the official to hand over classified information in exchange for free trips abroad. Zhou has denied the accusations.
TRANSPORTATION
Review of big bike access
Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said a meeting is scheduled for Friday to discuss changing regulations to allow large motorcycles on freeways. Experts, local government officials and bikers’ rights advocates have been invited. At present, large motorcycles — those with an engine of 550cc or larger — are only allowed on a 5.6km spur of the Chiang Wei-shui Freeway (National Freeway No. 3), which connects Taipei and New Taipei City’s Shenkeng District (深坑), on a trial basis. However, surveillance footage has shown that many of the bikers who have used the spur swerved in and out of traffic, as many people expected, Wang said. It is such behavior that has led to restrictions on big bikes on freeways, Wang added.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai