Taiwan’s first electronic storage device detection dog (K9 ESD), Wafer, has helped in three major crime cases, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday at a news conference in Taipei, which also marked Wafer’s first public appearance.
Since arriving in Taiwan in August last year, Wafer has found hidden devices belonging to the main suspect in a methamphetamine bust and helped investigations into election gambling, scam and money laundering cases, the CIB said.
A K9 ESD is trained to sniff out the chemical substance triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO), which is found in electronic storage devices such as cellphones, hard drives, flash drives or cold wallets for cryptocurrency that might contain illegal content and evidence of criminal activity, the CIB said.
Photo: CNA
Wafer reacts to confirm the locations of storage devices at investigation sites, the CIB said, adding that since its arrival, the sniffer dog has helped police find cellphones and tablets hidden in bedside cabinets and closets by crime ring members.
Wafer was donated to Taiwanese police force by the US-based nonprofit organization Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), which fights human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
OUR Asian division vice chair Nate Davis said new forms of crime require police to adopt new equipment and approaches, and Wafer can help detect electronic devices, giving investigators access to any criminal information stored on them.
CIB International Criminal Affairs Division researcher Lee Kun-ta (李昆達) said officers at the National Police Agency’s Third Special Police Corps underwent training in the US after coordinating with US Department of Homeland Security investigators and the OUR in July last year.
Wafer was brought to Taiwan to support law enforcement in the following month.
Davis told the press that the OUR donated a K9 ESD to Taiwan because the country works hard to fight human trafficking.
Wafer was named as a nod to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, he added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching