■ TRANSPORTATION
Freeway closing for drill
The Chiang Wei-shui Freeway (Freeway No. 5) linking Taipei with Ilan will be closed for five hours tomorrow starting at 9pm between Taipei County’s Shihding Township (石碇) and Ilan County’s Toucheng Township (頭城) for an emergency rescue drill, the Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau said yesterday. The section of the freeway to be closed for the firefighting and emergency rescue drills will include the full length of the 12.9km Hsuehshan Tunnel. Officials said the drill was a regular exercise to train response units in case of an emergency in the tunnel. They said the exercise would simulate an operation involving fire brigades and ambulance workers from Taipei and Ilan counties responding to a fire in the tunnel caused by a bus rear-ending another bus. Motorists traveling in either direction between Taipei and Ilan are advised to use other roads during the drill, the officials said.
■CRIME
Monk sentenced to jail
A Buddhist monk has been sentenced to 80 days in jail for repeated indecent exposure, a newspaper reported yesterday. Chen Poh-ming (陳博銘), 42, lifted his yellow monk’s robe and masturbated in front of a female tour guide on Feb. 16 while visiting the Paper Museum in Puli (埔里), Nantou County, the United Daily News reported. The shocked guide alerted police, who arrested him. Chen was released on bail the same day, but as he was riding a bus home, he masturbated in front of a woman passenger. The driver drove the bus directly to a police station, where Chen was arrested again. On Monday, the Nantou County District Court sentenced Chen to 80 days in jail.
■CRIME
Pirated goods seized
The National Police Agency has seized goods with a combined market value of NT$704 million (US$23.1 million) in 547 cases of intellectual property rights (IPR) infringement and arrested 635 suspects in its second crackdown this year, an agency official said yesterday. Police scoured marketplaces, shopping malls, night markets, factories, warehouses and containers and searched the Internet in a crackdown on the manufacturing, sale and smuggling of counterfeit and pirated goods between Monday and Thursday last week, the official said. He urged the public to support the agency’s efforts by rejecting counterfeit goods to protect the rights of copyright and trademark owners. He also encouraged the public to report crimes related to counterfeiting and piracy.
■CULTURE
Chiayi to host fireworks
The central government’s fireworks display in celebration of Double Ten National Day will take place in Chiayi City this year, Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) said yesterday. Siew, a native of Chiayi, made the announcement while attending a ceremony held by the Chiayi City Government to mark the 26th anniversary of the city’s status upgrade. Speaking as a guest of Chiayi Mayor Huang Ming-hui (黃敏惠), Siew described the Oct. 10 fireworks show as “a major international event” that will introduce Chiayi to the world by attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors, including tens of thousands of tourists from China and other countries to watch the festivities. It will be the first National Day fireworks show to be staged in Chiayi, Huang said, inviting the public to share in the celebrations.
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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