CRIME
Delegation to go to China
The Ministry of Justice yesterday said it would send a delegation to China tomorrow to discuss the detention of Taiwanese nationals for alleged involvement in telecom fraud in Malaysia and Kenya. Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) said the team is scheduled to leave tomorrow and return on Saturday. Personnel from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security are to meet the delegation in Zhuhai, Guangzhou Province. The two sides are to begin substantive negotiations on matters related to joint investigation and evidence collection. Chen said the delegation is to be headed by Department of International and Cross-Strait Legal Affairs Director-General Chen Wen-chi (陳文琪). It will also include officials from the Mainland Affairs Council, the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Criminal Investigation Bureau. Last month, 45 Taiwanese were deported to China from Kenya, and 32 were deported from Malaysia.
ENVIRONMENT
Oil spill cleanup completed
Cleanup of an oil spill from a container ship that ran aground on the New Taipei City shoreline was completed yesterday after two months of work, the city’s Environmental Protection Department said. All the remaining fuel in the vessel had been removed by Thursday last week, the department said. The TS Taipei ran aground on March 10 off the city’s Shimen District (石門). Battered by rough seas, the stranded vessel began breaking apart and leaking oil on March 24, creating an oil slick stretching as far as 5km. Over the past two months, 12,446 people have worked on the cleanup, with 127,039kg of debris having been removed, 377.82m3 of fuel and heavy oil pumped out of the ship, and 59.16m3 of oil cleared from the shoreline and sea surface, the department said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
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