Taipei - Twenty-nine young survivors of the deadly earthquake in China's Sichuan Province were in Taiwan for a holiday to help them recover from the trauma of the May 12 quake which killed 70,000 people, reports said Saturday.

The children, aged between seven years and their teens, were guests of the Chinatrust Charity Foundation, a Taiwanese charity.

Having visited Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, and the Taipei Zoo, the group on Saturday arrived in Nantou County in central Taiwan, to visit the site of the September 21, 1999 earthquake which killed 2,321 people and injuring 8,000.

Taipei - Taiwan's foreign currency reserves dropped by nearly 1 billion US dollars in September due to the net outflow of foreign capital, the central bank said on Friday.

By the end of September, Taiwan's foreign currency reserves totaled 281.1 billion US dollars, down 957 million US dollars from August.

The figure makes Taiwan the holder of the world's fifth-largest foreign currency reserves after China, Japan, Russia and India, the central bank said.

Taipei - A Boeing 747-400 jetliner of Taiwan's major carrier China Airlines was hit by severe air turbulence on its way from Hong Kong to Bangkok Thursday, resulting in the injury of 21 people, the airlines said.

"Flight CI 641 arrived in Bangkok safely, and the injured, including, 5 crew members and 16 passengers, received hospital treatment," the airlines said in a news statement.

A total of 147 passengers and 18 crew members were on board the plane when the turbulence occurred without warning over Thai airspace, the airline said.

Taipei  - Police in southern Taiwan are looking for a man who rode his motorbike naked through a city's main streets for one hour, TV reports said Tuesday.

The man, aged between 30-40, rode a motorbike in Tainan City for about one hour on Monday in a light drizzle caused by typhoon Jangmi, cable TV channel TVBS and ETTV reported. He wore only a crash helmet.

Although a lot of people stayed home because of the typhoon, many saw him and took photos with their cell phone cameras, TVBS said.

TVBS broadcast a video clip which showed the man riding a motorbike and sometimes honking the horn.

Taipei - Taiwan stocks dropped nearly 6 per cent in mid-morning trading Tuesday, due to Wall Street falls caused by the US Congress failing to to pass the 700-billion-US-dollar bank rescue package.

The Taiwan stock market dropped 400 points after opening at 9 am, despite Taiwan government unveiling an emergency plan to stabilize the bourse earlier on Tuesday.

Two hours into the session, the TAIEX had fallen 324.81 points, or 5.48 per cent, to 5,604.82 points.

Taipei - Typhoon Jangmi left two people dead, two missing and 58 injured when it slammed Taiwan over the weekend, the country's disaster centre said on Monday.

An 18-year-old woman motorcyclist in Taichung County died when an electric wire broken by the wind snapped her off the bike. She died from the injuries.

Also in Taichung County, an 82-year-old man going for a haircut was blown off his motorbike by strong winds and drowned in a flooded rice paddy, the centre said.

A total of 58 people were injured across the island, many hit by fallen signboards or cut by fallen glass.

The typhoon caused severe damage to agriculture as large areas of crops and vegetables were inundated by floods.