The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) plans to establish an office in Taipei to promote exchanges with local law enforcement agencies, a US narcotics official said on Tuesday.
Phillip Esch, narcotics attache for the DEA Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Office, made the announcement at a two-day international workshop on combating transnational crime and forensic science that opened in Taipei on Tuesday under the US-Taiwan Global Cooperation and Training Framework.
The DEA hopes the proposed Taipei office will help enhance cooperation between law enforcement agencies, and that the two sides will be able to further exchange information on cross-border crime, Esch said.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
However, the date for establishing the office has yet to be determined, he added.
According to the DEA Web site, the agency has 86 foreign offices in 62 nations, 14 of which are in the Far East, including Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore and Australia.
The Taipei workshop was cohosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau and the American Institute in Taiwan.
Representatives from 16 nations on three continents attended the event to discuss how to deepen international cooperation and combat cross-border crime, the foreign ministry said.
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
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. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
RSS