CRIME
Murder suspect questioned
Taipei prosecutors on Tuesday said that they were questioning a man over the killing of fugitive Shih Mou-chiang (石茂強), whose body was found in Bangkok on Sunday. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said that a man in his 20s surnamed Chou (周) was brought in for questioning after returning to Taiwan on Monday. Shih, a 44-year-old Taiwanese who had been on the run since 2022, was found with three bullet wounds to the head in an abandoned building near Suvarnabhumi Airport by a janitor. Thai police said that a pair of gloves and 500g of ketamine were found near Shih’s body. The Bangkok Post reported that three Taiwanese took a taxi to the rented residence of a woman, believed to be Shih’s girlfriend, at 3:12am on Sunday, shortly after they arrived in Thailand. Gunshots were heard and the suspects left the residence at 4:51am in a red Mazda van, the newspaper said. Citing surveillance images, Napatpong Supaporn, the head of immigration in Thailand’s Sa Kaeo Province, told the newspaper that the suspects arrived in Sa Kaeo in a red Mazda van at about 4pm on Sunday before crossing the border to Poipet in Cambodia at 6pm the same day, when there was no warrant out for their arrest. They departed for Phnom Penh at about 9pm and Thai police were waiting for Cambodian officials to check whether they had left the country, it said. The 23-year-old owner of the van, a woman named Priyanuch Thammarat, was detained in Cambodia and would be deported, Thai police said. The whereabouts of the three other suspects was unknown as of press time last night.
CRIME
Japan arrests ‘monk’
A 21-year-old Taiwanese was arrested at Narita International Airport late last month for trying to smuggle drugs into Japan dressed as a monk, Japanese media reported on Tuesday and yesterday. Narita customs officials told reporters that the man, surnamed Liu (劉), was carrying 6kg of drugs after arriving from Cambodia on Jan. 25. Liu packed the drugs — reportedly a type of banned stimulant with a market value of ¥370 million (US$2.46 million) — into 40 pouches that he secured on his stomach and thighs with plastic wrap, reports said. After his arrest, the man confessed and was indicted, the reports said. Customs officials at Narita airport became suspicious because Liu had entered Japan on a separate trip just 10 days earlier, also dressed as a monk, the reports said. Liu told prosecutors that the first trip was a trial run, the reports said.
CUSTOMS
US pizza sauce seized
Pizza sauce imported from the US was seized at the border after it was found to contain excessive pesticide residues, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Tuesday. The sauce, imported by Taiwan Kagome Co, was sent for testing on Jan. 29 and was found to have 1.3 parts per million (ppm) of ethylene-oxide, well above the maximum permissible limit of 0.1ppm. The 19 tonnes of sauce would be destroyed or returned to its country of origin, the FDA said. FDA Deputy Director-General Lin Chin-fu (林金富) said Taiwan Kagome has imported 11 batches of pizza sauce from the US in the past six months, and of four randomly inspected batches, two failed inspections. All pizza sauce imported by the company would be subjected to batch-by-batch inspections, Lin added. Other goods — imported by separate firms — that were seized included chili powder from China, chopsticks from Japan and green beans from Indonesia, Lin said.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its