Nearly 700kg of ketamine powder was last week seized in a raid carried out by law enforcement at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said yesterday.
The ketamine powder, which has an estimated market value of NT$1 billion (US$34.71 million), was the biggest shipment of illegal drugs ever smuggled into Taiwan by air, the bureau said.
Acting on a tip-off, authorities on Thursday last week intercepted the Hong Kong shipment at the airport, CIB Deputy Commissioner Teng Hsueh-hsin (鄧學鑫) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Chiu Chun-fu, Taipei Times
The officers also arrested a pickup driver and three customs officers believed to have been involved, Teng said.
During questioning, the customs officers denied any involvement and were later released on bail, Teng added.
The driver surnamed Wang (王) said that he was hired to deliver a cargo, but had no idea what it was, the bureau said.
Wang is being held with restricted communication, it said, adding that the case has been handed over to prosecutors for further investigation of alleged breaches of the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例).
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
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