■CRIME
Alleged fraudsters nabbed
Police yesterday arrested two alleged members of a crime ring that disguises numbers of incoming phone calls. Members of the National Police Agency (NPA) and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) accompanied Kaohsiung district prosecutors yesterday to make the arrests in Fengshan (鳳山市), Kaohsiung County. The pair were arrested in connection with operating computer equipment to assist fraudsters making calls, police chief Shen Chien-ren (沈建仁) said. The equipment can falsify phone numbers to simulate a fake number when the receiver sees the caller ID. It can also change the serial numbers of cellphone SIM cards to prevent investigators from tracking them. Police say this is the first time such equipment has been confiscated in Taiwan. Fraudsters typically instruct people to withdraw money from an ATM or fill out forms at a bank to transfer money to criminals’ bank accounts. Those who have received suspicious phone calls should verify the validity of the caller by calling back to see if the number reached the same caller, police said. People receiving fraudulent phone calls can report them by dialing the toll-free number 165.
■HEALTH
Physician’s Act amended
A Cabinet meeting yesterday approved an amendment to the Physician’s Act (醫師法) setting new conditions for individuals obtaining medical degrees abroad to practice medicine in Taiwan. Graduates from foreign medical schools will not be allowed to sit qualification examinations in Taiwan unless their degree certificates are authenticated by the Ministry of Education and they have successfully completed an internship. The amendment comes after a demonstration by medical students on Sunday that called on the government to address the problem of increasing numbers of students seeking medical degrees in eastern European countries that became members of the EU in recent years. In Taiwan, medical students must complete a seven-year course and a two-year internship before qualifying for license exams, while a medical student in Poland, for example, only needs to study for four years and is not required to do an internship.
■HEALTH
Two more H1N1 cases
The Central Epidemics Command Centers (CECC) yesterday announced another two confirmed swine flu cases, bringing the nation’s total of confirmed cases to 16. Both had recently returned from New York. CECC spokesman Shih Wen-yi (施文儀) said one was a 25-year-old graduate student who arrived in Taiwan on May 29. The other case is a 24-year-old businessman based in Manhattan. He arrived in Taiwan on Monday.
■HEALTH
Minister wants screening
Department of Health (DOH) Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) said yesterday that Taiwan should retain its policy of screening new migrant workers for hepatitis B, given that most work in close contact with their employers. Yeh was referring to a recent decision by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to revoke the policy of testing workers for hepatitis B on arrival in Taiwan. The center revoked the regulation based on the consideration that the disease can only be transmitted via blood or body fluids. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hou Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳) said the cancelation of hepatitis B testing of new migrant workers would put the country’s citizens at risk.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
Actor Lee Wei (李威) was released on bail on Monday after being named as a suspect in the death of a woman whose body was found in the meeting place of a Buddhist group in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) last year, prosecutors said. Lee, 44, was released on NT$300,000 (US$9,148) bail, while his wife, surnamed Chien (簡), was released on NT$150,000 bail after both were summoned to give statements regarding the woman’s death. The home of Lee, who has retreated from the entertainment business in the past few years, was also searched by prosecutors and police earlier on Monday. Lee was questioned three
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
RSS