■ POLITICS
Former treasurer released
Former presidential treasurer Chen Chen-hui (陳鎮慧), who has been detained since Sept. 25 in connection with the “state affairs fund” case, was released yesterday afternoon after being questioned by the Supreme Prosecutor Office’s Special Investigation Panel (SIP). SIP Spokesman Chen Yun-nan (陳雲南) said the reason to detain Chen Chen-hui no longer existed, so prosecutors decided to release her. Chen Yun-nan did not elaborate. Chen Chen-hui was the first detainee in the prosectuors’ investigation into former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) suspected role in a case of alleged embezzlement and money-laundering. She was never indicted.
■ FISHERIES
NZ looking for 29 fishermen
The New Zealand Air Force began searching yesterday for 29 fishermen whose burned-out boat was found floating near the Phoenix Islands in Kiribati earlier this month. An initial search for the Taiwanese vessel failed to find any sign of the fishermen after New Zealand Orion aircraft covered about 30 percent of the 54,000km² search area, rescue officials said. The search is scheduled to resume today after the aircraft refuels in Samoa, Rescue Coordination Center spokesman Ross Henderson said. The burned-out fishing boat, the Ta Ching 21, was found deserted but still afloat by a South Korean fishing vessel on Nov. 9. A search of the boat revealed three life rafts and a rescue boat were missing, raising hopes the crew had been able to safely abandon the vessel, Henderson said. The last radio transmission from the fishing boat — crewed by Taiwanese, Chinese, Filipinos and Indonesians — was on Oct. 28 and there was no indication of problems. Air Commodore Gavin Howse said the air force was advised of the missing men on Monday.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
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