Law enforcement agencies on Friday raided a farm in rural Tainan, seizing cannabis plants worth an estimated NT$90 million (US$2.96 million) and detaining two men.
The seizure was the result of a joint operation between the Coast Guard Administration and police investigation units.
The two suspects, 28-year-old Hsu Po-han (許柏漢) and 30-year-old Tai Chun-te (戴俊德), have prior convictions for drug possession, information from the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office shows.
Photo: Wang Chun-chung, Taipei Times
Hsu and Tai rented several plots of land on a farm in Tainan’s Guantian District (官田) to grow cannabis, some of which was for their personal use, but the majority was to be sold, prosecutors said.
Police investigation units said they had received tip-offs concerning cannabis seeds being smuggled into Taiwan for cultivation, and they had the farm under surveillance for three months so that the plants could reach maturity before the raid.
Their rented farm looked like an ordinary fruit orchard, but cannabis plants were allegedly concealed between trees, prosecutors said, adding that the suspects would select healthy plants and take them indoors for better care.
The raid netted a total of 210 cannabis plants, along with dried product which officials estimated to be worth about NT$90 million, based on a street price at about NT$1,500 per gram and plant processing equipment.
The two suspects allegedly violated the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (毒品危害防制條例), prosecutors said, adding that they were questioning the two over the source of the cannabis seeds and how they planned to sell the cannabis.
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm early yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, less than a week after a typhoon barreled across the nation. The agency issued an advisory at 3:30am stating that the 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, of the Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, with a 100km radius. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA
Residents have called on the Taipei City Government to reconsider its plan to demolish a four-decades-old pedestrian overpass near Daan Forest Park. The 42-year-old concrete and steel structure that serves as an elevated walkway over the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng roads is to be closed on Tuesday in preparation for demolition slated for completion by the end of the month. However, in recent days some local residents have been protesting the planned destruction of the intersection overpass that is rendered more poetically as “sky bridge” in Chinese. “This bridge carries the community’s collective memory,” said a man surnamed Chuang
FATALITIES: The storm claimed at least two lives — a female passenger in a truck that was struck by a falling tree and a man who was hit by a utility pole Workers cleared fallen trees and shop owners swept up debris yesterday after one of the biggest typhoons to hit the nation in decades claimed at least two lives. Typhoon Kong-rey was packing winds of 184kph when it slammed into eastern Taiwan on Thursday, uprooting trees, triggering floods and landslides, and knocking out power as it swept across the nation. A 56-year-old female foreign national died from her injuries after the small truck she was in was struck by a falling tree on Provincial Highway 14A early on Thursday. The second death was reported at 8pm in Taipei on Thursday after a 48-year-old man
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm earlier today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, in this year's Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am, the CWA said. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) with a 100km radius, it said. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA meteorologist Huang En-hung (黃恩宏) said. However, a more accurate forecast would be made on Wednesday, when Yinxing is
RSS