Taipei - Police detained a Taiwan woman Tuesday for joking that there was a bomb in her hand luggage.

The woman, identified only by her surname Wu, was preparing to fly from Tuesday afternoon Taipei to Singapore on a Singaporean Airlines flight at the Taoyuan International Airport.

After she had boarded the plane, an air hostess helped her put her carry-on luggage into the overhead bin and quipped: "It seems kind of heavy. What's inside?"

"There is a bomb inside," Wu joked.

The air hostess called the flight captain who ordered Wu and her luggage removed from the plane for security checks.

Taipei - Taiwan's Evergreen Marine Corporation, expecting recovery of the global economy by 2012, plans to order 100 container ships and boost its competitiveness, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

The Economic Daily News cited Evergreen Marine owner Chang Jung-fa as saying that Evergreen plans to order the new ships to expand its fleet and to replace 30-year-old ships.

Evergreen, Taiwan's largest and the world's fourth-largest container shipping operator, has 186 container vessels, half of which are self-owned and the rest rented.

Taipei  - Taiwan's Evergreen Marine Corp, expecting recovery of the global economy by 2012, plans to order 100 container ships and boost its competitiveness, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

The Economic Daily News cited Evergreen Marine owner Chang Jung-fa as saying that Evergreen plans to order the new ships to expand its fleet and to replace
30-year-old ships.

Evergreen, Taiwan's largest and the world's fourth-largest container shipping operator, has 178 container vessels, out of which 100 are self-owned and the rest rented.

Taipei  - A computer breakdown at the Taipei international airport continued Tuesday, causing chaos with customs officers hand- recording departing passengers' data and passengers forming long queues, according to radio reports.

The computer glitch, which began at about 6:45 am Monday, continued Tuesday, prompting Immigration Minister Hsieh Li-kung to show up at the Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei to supervise repair work, Broadcasting Corp of China said.

Taipei  - A Taiwan watch thief has been arrested after sending the stolen expensive watches to their owner to estimate their value, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Tsai Chin-hsin, 37, broke into a house on December 28 in Hsinchu, west Taiwan, and made off with nine watches and some jewellery, the China Times reported.

Believing the watches might be quite expensive, he asked an associate identified by his surname, Chuang, to take the stolen timepieces to a watch shop in Hsinchu to be appraised.

Taipei - Taiwan's foreign exchange reserves posted a month- on-month increase to a record high of 291.71 billion US dollars in December on interest and other gains, the Central Bank reported Monday.

"Our foreign exchange reserves stood at 291.707 billion US dollars as of end of December, up 11.022 billion dollars from the end of November," the bank said in a press statement.

It said the increase - the biggest in history - was mainly due to interest rate gains and a valuation increase of the euro, the Japanese yen and Swiss franc against the dollar.