■ CRIME
Hoaxer detained at airport
A Taiwanese man was detained yesterday for allegedly claiming to have a bomb in his luggage on a flight destined for Shanghai, airport police said. The man, identified only by his surname, Pang, made the claim immediately after boarding a China Airlines aircraft at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, police said. Pang, who was taken away by police for questioning, said he had only been joking, police said. No explosives were found in his luggage. He faces charges under the Civil Aviation Act (民用航空法), which carry a maximum three-year prison term and a fine of NT$1.5 million (US$47,000). The flight was delayed for more than 40 minutes.
■ SPORTS
Charity helps fund trip
A charity group in Kaohsiung has donated NT$1 million to help fund an elementary school soccer team’s trip to Hungary to compete in an international youth tournament, school officials said yesterday. The spirits of Houjing Elementary School’s team were boosted at the prospect of traveling to the European country late next month to play in the Kun Cup, a trip made possible by the donation from the Chen Chung-ho Charity Foundation (陳中和翁) and presented to the school by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順). The children said they would train even harder and that they were confident of winning the tournament. School principal Yang Kuang-ming (楊光明) expressed appreciation for Huang’s efforts to raise the funds for the team and said the school itself had raised about NT$300,000 and the Kaohsiung City Government and the Sports Affairs Council had also donated some NT$1 million to subsidize the cost of the trip for the 32-member team, who won a national children’s soccer championship last month, giving them the right to compete in the Kun Cup in Szolnok in August.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Officials to hold spill talks
China and Taiwan will hold talks about working together to limit the impact of an oil spill after the massive Gulf of Mexico spill raised concerns in Taipei, an environmental official said on Sunday. China has set up massive oil fields near Taiwan. Experts from the two sides will meet in August or September, the Environmental Protection Administration said. “We’ll discuss a number of topics, including the establishment of contacts for the responsible government officials who would be able to act immediately once an oil spill incident has happened,” Water Quality Protection Bureau chief Chen Shyan-heng (陳咸亨) said. The talks in Taipei, the third of their kind, could pave the way for exercises mobilizing personnel and equipment from the two sides, he said.
■ LAW
Prosecutors seek popularity
Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) yesterday urged prosecutors to clean up their image. At a seminar with prosecutors of the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office in Tainan, the minister said the public has a negative opinion of prosecutors because it lacks knowledge of what the job requires. This feeling is especially strong among lawmakers, who rarely praise prosecutors for their work, the minister said, citing his experience in fielding lawmakers’ questions at the legislature. “Prosecutors are most often accused of indicting suspects recklessly,” the minister said, urging prosecutors to only prosecute suspects when there is ironclad evidence against them. The minister said prosecutors launched a three-month campaign this month to weed out those crimes that most concern the public.
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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