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.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
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