The boarding of a fishing vessel suspected of transporting contraband turned into the largest marine seizure of illegal drugs so far this year, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) has announced.
Labels on the packages containing 320kg of ketamine, shipped as tea leaves, had simplified Chinese characters, so the cargo is suspected to have originated in China, CGA Investigation Branch deputy chief Ruan Wen-chieh (阮文杰) said.
The boarding was conducted on Thursday last week at the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島), about 200 nautical miles (370km) southwest of Kaohsiung Port, Ruan added.
Photo: Hung Ting-hung, Taipei Times
Test results showed that the packages contained ketamine with an estimated street value of about NT$320 million (US$10.38 million), he said.
“Surveillance indicated that a criminal ring had plans to smuggle ketamine in a fishing vessel to try to make huge profits by selling ketamine pills to revellers at the Spring Scream music festival,” Ruan said.
The three-day music festival is to take place at the seaside park in Kaohsiung’s Cijin District (旗津) from May 3 to 5.
The 50-tonne Lai Shun Yi 333 fishing vessel was headed to rendezvous with a Chinese ship near the Pratas Islands, where the packages were loaded, as a 100-tonne CGA patrol cutter arrived in the area, and boarded and examined its cargo, he said.
Ruan quoted the fishing vessel’s captain, a 44-year-old man surnamed Hsu (許), as saying that someone had contacted him to transport cargo to Kaohsiung Port, and that he agreed to do so for payment of NT$6 million.
Hsu and a crew member surnamed Chou (周) face charges of breaching the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例), although the investigation is ongoing to name other members of the alleged smuggling ring.
In related news, the Investigation Branch in Yilan County said they uncovered illegal Chinese cigarettes in eight containers at Keelung Port.
Saturday’s raid, conducted by the CGA and local police units, found about 3,600 boxes of cigarettes in the seized containers, CGA Investigation Branch deputy captain Lee Chin-an (李進安) said.
The cigarettes had an estimated street value of NT$210 million, he added.
Suspects apprehended in the case face charges of breaching the Tobacco and Alcohol Administration Act (菸酒管理法), Lee said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching