■ TRANSPORTATION
Pirate attack suspected
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday evening that a Kaohsiung-registered fishing boat, the MV Win Far 101, was believed to have been hijacked by pirates approximately 1,000km off the coast of Africa. MOFA Spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said the boat had a crew of 30. Only the captain and second captain were Taiwanese, while the crew were from Indonesia, China and the Philippines. A wire report said a British cargo ship had been hijacked along with the Taiwanese boat near the Seychelles. The Fisheries Agency has contacted its British counterpart and the US naval authority stationed in the region for assistance, Chen said.
■ POLITICS
ARATS official arrives
Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Deputy Director An Min (安民) arrived yesterday for a seven-day visit. An said his trip was a business inspection and not related to the forthcoming meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林). The meeting is scheduled for next month or June. Chiang, who spoke at a dinner he hosted for An yesterday evening, said the government’s policy was to tackle easier and more urgent issues first and steadily move toward more difficult and less pressing ones. Economic issues precede political ones, he said.
■ POLITICS
Chiu accuses Ker of crime
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) yesterday accused Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) of involvement in illegal stock trading. Stock investor Chang Shih-chieh (張世傑), who finished a prison term in February, recently published an autobiography in which he says he conspired with a number of legislators and hosts of stock market investment programs to manipulate the stock market. He said one of the legislators was a senior DPP legislator who visited him while in detention and asked him to shoulder responsibility for the illegal trading. Chiu said yesterday Chang was referring to Ker, who had close relations with Chang. Ker yesterday rebutted the claim. Chang, along with KMT Legislator Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁), was indicted in 2005 for violating the Securities Transaction Law (證券交易法) and for breach of trust in relation to illegal trading of Hold-Key Wire & Cable Cooperation (合機電線電纜公司) shares.
■ ECONOMY
Kaoliang vouchers issued
The Kinmen County Government said it would present every Kinmen resident with NT$10,800 in gift vouchers this year for purchasing the island chain’s most famous product, kaoliang. A first batch of gift vouchers was distributed to the county’s 85,143 residents at 45 locations in six townships on Sunday, with each resident receiving NT$3,600 in vouchers. The residents have until June 5 to spend the vouchers in exchange for kaoliang from a local distillery. The county government said it would do the same twice more to coincide with the Dragon Boat Festival on May 28 and the Mid-Autumn Festival on Oct. 3. The vouchers are being handed out to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Kuningtou in Kinmen in late October 1949, officials said. During that battle, troops in Kinmen defeated 19,000 invading Chinese troops, killing 3,873 and capturing 5,175 others. The Kinmen garrison troops lost 1,267 casualties.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
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