The Control Yuan yesterday censured the National Police Ad-ministration and the Taipei City Police Headquarters for seriously damaging the police force's image of being capable of enforcing the law.
The damage to police respectability, according to the Control Yuan, resulted from scandals where it was found that some municipal policemen ran call-girl services and detained prostitutes to extort money from their managers during 2000 and 2001.
In addition, Control Yuan members also censured the two agencies for their failure to discipline the police force over the past five years. The Yuan says 1,511 police officers went to China, Hong Kong and Macao over the past 5 years without obtaining permission from the government.
In an investigative report that was released yesterday, Control Yuan members Chan Yi-chang (詹益彰), Kuo Shih-chi (郭石吉), Ko Min-mou (柯明謀), and Li You-chi (李友吉) pointed out that policemen Huang Hsin-chin (黃新進), Chiang Jen-tso (江仁佐) and Su Tang-yi (蘇唐儀) of the Ta-an police precinct, detective Lin Chia-fu (林家福) of the Chungshan police precinct and other officers were found to have engaged in illegal dealings. These dealings were mainly the detaining of prostitutes to extort money or the running of call-girl services during 2000 and 2001.
At least 10 policemen were proven to have been involved in the scandals though some cases are still being prosecuted.
The Taiwan government allows Chinese brides to enter Taiwan to visit their husbands after they get married. But criminal groups use young Taiwanese men to marry Chinese women and then bring them to Taiwan to become prostitutes and make money for them. In 2000 and 2001, it became evident that many policemen extorted money from this racket while they were actually supposed to clamp down on it.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied