Taoyuan police have arrested 674 suspected gang members, and seized illegal weapons and drugs, Taoyuan police chief Chen Kuo-ching (陳國進) told a news conference on Saturday.
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) at the news conference praised Chen and the officers who took part in the raids as they displayed the seized items — 11 handguns, one Uzi submachine gun, 186 bullets of different calibers, as well as pouches of heroin, amphetamine, ketamine and other illegal drugs.
The suspects, who include alleged members of the Bamboo Union and Heavenly Way Alliance gangs, were handed over to Taoyuan prosecutors, Chen said, adding that they face charges of organized crime, extortion, coercion and assault, as well as illegal drug and firearms possession.
In other news, Keelung police yesterday captured a man surnamed Hsieh (謝), 47, who is suspected of strangling his wife surnamed Tseng (曾), 45, to death with electrical cord.
The couple had been fighting and Tseng had obtained a restraining order against her husband and filed for divorce after he beat her, but they were still living together as they awaited bureaucratic procedures, investigators said.
The couple’s daughter found her mother’s body at their home in Hualien on Friday, they said.
Hsieh the same day took a train to Keelung to hide, investigators said.
In a separate case, the New Taipei City District Court approved prosecutors’ request to detain a man surnamed Kuo (郭), 65, after his wife, surnamed Lin (林), 57, was on Saturday found stabbed to death in their residence in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋).
Kuo did not attempt to flee and was detained at the scene of the crime, police said, adding that he apparently had mental problems and could not clearly explain what happened as police gathered evidence.
In another case, police yesterday detained a man surnamed Su (蘇), 55, in the city’s Shulin District (樹林) for allegedly burning his Vietnamese girlfriend to death on Monday last week.
Su met the woman surnamed Hoang, 22, at an eatery where she was working, but their relationship soured when she began to take on other jobs, including working as a masseuse, police said.
Su told police that Hoang had deceived him, as she had not told him that she was married.
Su bought two containers and filled them with gasoline before pouring it on Hoang and allegedly setting her alight, police said.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
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