Taipei - Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou Tuesday said his government still needs time to digest the content of a goodwill speech on cross-strait relations recently made by his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao.

"We are still making further efforts to try to understand what exactly (Hu) wanted to convey through his speech," said Ma in a meeting with a group of visiting US scholars.

Through a press statement, he said the Chinese leader "had in certain aspect made concrete responses to some of Taiwan's concerns." Ma did not elaborate.

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.