Immigration authorities yesterday said they have located an Indonesian migrant worker wanted on suspicion of identity theft whose whereabouts had been unknown since she tested positive for HIV.
A specialized unit from the National Immigration Agency (NIA) found the 38-year-old pregnant woman in Taoyuan early yesterday, immigration agents said.
She is expected to be transferred to the Miaoli District Prosecutors’ Office following allegations that she committed fraud by assuming the identity of another person, they said.
Ching Shao-an (荊少安), head of the NIA’s specialized operation squad in Taoyuan, said the woman arrived in Taiwan to work as a caregiver in July last year, but in December left her job to join her Indonesian boyfriend, also an absconded migrant worker, who lives in Yunlin County.
The woman last month discovered she was pregnant and decided to have an abortion, Ching said.
When seeking an abortion at a Yunlin clinic on June 8, she allegedly used an Alien Resident Certificate and a National Health Insurance card borrowed from an Indonesian acquaintance on the pretext of helping her obtain a SIM card, the NIA’s Yunlin County Service Center said.
Her abortion request was refused by the doctor on the grounds that she was already six months pregnant, the NIA said.
The clinic notified Yunlin County’s Public Health Bureau after the results of a blood test showed that the woman was HIV positive, it said.
However, the health bureau said that when it tried to contact the woman about the test results, it instead reached the acquaintance whose identity documents she had allegedly stolen.
An investigation into the woman found that she had four Taiwanese boyfriends, bureau officials said, adding that they were concerned the virus could spread given the difficulties authorities are having in identifying the men.
Alain Robert, known as the "French Spider-Man," praised Alex Honnold as exceptionally well-prepared after the US climber completed a free solo ascent of Taipei 101 yesterday. Robert said Honnold's ascent of the 508m-tall skyscraper in just more than one-and-a-half hours without using safety ropes or equipment was a remarkable achievement. "This is my life," he said in an interview conducted in French, adding that he liked the feeling of being "on the edge of danger." The 63-year-old Frenchman climbed Taipei 101 using ropes in December 2004, taking about four hours to reach the top. On a one-to-10 scale of difficulty, Robert said Taipei 101
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US climber Alex Honnold left Taiwan this morning a day after completing a free-solo ascent of Taipei 101, a feat that drew cheers from onlookers and gained widespread international attention. Honnold yesterday scaled the 101-story skyscraper without a rope or safety harness. The climb — the highest urban free-solo ascent ever attempted — took just more than 90 minutes and was streamed live on Netflix. It was covered by major international news outlets including CNN, the New York Times, the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal. As Honnold prepared to leave Taiwan today, he attracted a crowd when he and his wife, Sanni,
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