The Control Yuan yesterday passed a motion to impeach nine naval officers involved in the July 2016 accidental firing of an anti-ship missile that hit a fishing boat, killing the captain and injuring three crew members.
The Control Yuan, the government branch in charge of investigating wrongdoing by officials and government agencies, held a similar review session in July last year after a motion was filed to impeach the nine officers, but the motion failed.
After 11 newly appointed members took office, the Control Yuan was able to call a new vote on the case, which can be done as long as there are nine members present and the nine voting are different from the members who voted on the motion the first time.
The Control Yuan impeached Lieutenant Commander Lin Po-tse (林伯澤) and his deputy, Lin Ching-chi (林清吉), of the navy’s Chinchiang-class corvette from where the missile was fired, along with Rear Admiral Hu Chih-cheng (胡志政), head of the navy’s 131st Fleet, and six others.
The firing of the missile, which is deemed to have resulted from human error, happened because of a failure to follow standard operating procedures.
Immediately following the incident in 2016, the Navy punished seven of the officers involved with demerits.
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
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