CRIME
CGA detains illegal workers
Coast Guard Administration (CGA) personnel in Yunlin County have detained seven undocumented migrant workers from Indonesia, along with a Taiwanese man who allegedly acted as their employment broker, CGA Yunlin Investigation Branch Deputy Captain Lee Shui-sheng (李水昇) said on Tuesday. The broker, surnamed Wu (吳), was driving the group to a construction site in Yuanchang Township (元長) on Thursday last week when they were detained, Lee said. The Indonesians were transferred to the National Immigration Agency for deportation, he said, adding that they are aged 25 to 35 and had been reported missing from their legal jobs for between several months and three years. Authorities had received a tip-off that Wu was arranging work for undocumented migrant workers and transporting them to construction sites, where they earned NT$1,200 per day, Lee said.
CRIME
Man fined for hotline pranks
The Keelung District Court has ordered a 44-year-old man surnamed Hsu (許) to pay a NT$5,000 fine for prank calling the 110 emergency hotline several times over three hours. Hsu first called the hotline at about 11pm on Sept. 20, saying that he was involved in a dispute and required police intervention, a claim that police could not substantiate after arriving on the scene, the court said. Despite police telling him not to make more prank calls, Hsu later called the hotline two more times and received two more warnings from police who arrived at the scene, the court said. After a fourth call, police arrested Hsu for disrupting social order, it said. Hsu was “under the influence of alcohol” and could not adequately control his impulses, the court said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift