■SOCIETY
Police arrest 65 at festival
Police yesterday said that so far a total of 65 people had been arrested for possession or use of drugs during the annual Spring Scream music festival in Kenting. Police said they arrested one man and three women in a room at the Chateau Beach Resort for possession of Ketamine, Ecstasy and other drugs. Police said the man admitted he used drugs, while the three women denied drugs use. Also on Saturday evening, police arrested 61 partygoers for possession or use of drugs in five rooms at the same beach resort. Those arrested will be charged with violation of the Narcotics Endangerment Prevention Act (違反毒品危害防制條例), police said. The festival started on Friday and ran through yesterday. Police said that as of yesterday, no violence or sexual assaults had been reported. Police said there had been 10 car accidents during the festival resulting in three deaths and 12 injuries. Some of the accidents were caused by drunk driving, police said.
■ DEFENSE
ROC-PRC meet downplayed
Reported military-to-military contacts between Ministry of National Defense and Chinese officials scheduled to take place in Hawaii later this year have been blown out of proportion, a report posted on the Defense News magazine Web site said on Friday. The report quoted a former US military official as saying that the rumored meeting at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS), a US Department of Defense-funded think tank based in Hawaii, was “not a big deal.” The source told Defense News that Taiwanese and Chinese officials had met each other on several previous occasions since the mid-1990s and that the APCSS’ Transnational Security Cooperation Course in Hawaii was not part of formal military contact, as was mistakenly reported by several media outlets.
■ TOURISM
Hualien eyes ‘blue highway’
Hualien and Okinawa hope to build a “blue highway” on the Pacific Ocean to connect the two popular tourist destinations. Following a meeting with Hualien Mayor Tsai Chih-ta (蔡啟塔), Okinawa Deputy Governor Katsuko Asato said on Saturday that Okinawa was promoting cruises to attract more foreign tourists and the planned blue highway was the key element of this. Asato said she hoped the planned blue highway would help increase the volume of tourist visits to the Japanese prefecture from the current 5 million to 10 million per year. Tsai said that because the blue highway would be international, its opening would involve maritime rights and quarantine guidelines. Dealing with any legal problems was key to its success, Tsai said.
■ CRIME
Police catch book thief
Police have arrested a woman who stole nearly 2,000 books from bookstores in the past year to sell them on the Internet, local media reported on Saturday. Police arrested the women, surnamed Fu (傅), 31, in Kaohsiung on Friday. Fu admitted having stolen nearly 2,000 books from Kaohsiung bookstores and selling 1,500 of them online, local media reported. Fu said she did not like reading but began stealing books after she was laid off by a factory early last year. Fu mostly took bestsellers and travel books. Her online book business was so good that she had long-time clients and accepted orders for books. In the past year, Fu stole an average of five books per day. To avoid being recognized by bookstore staff, she constantly changed her appearance police said.
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
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,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
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
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