Flights between Taipei and Palau will resume on Saturday after being suspended 11 days because of a bankrupt carrier’s cancelation of flights, visiting Palauan President Tommy Remengesan said.
Remengesan said on Friday that Taipei-based China Airlines (CAL, 華航) will offer charter flights on the air route that closed after the only airline flying the route, Taipei-based Far Eastern Air Transport Corp (FAT, 遠東航空), suspended operations on May 12.
Remengesan made the announcement during a visit to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. He came to Taiwan to attend the inauguration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Tuesday last week.
Remengesan said he would take the first CAL charter flight on his trip home.
Noting that the Taiwanese form the biggest contingent of tourists to the Pacific island nation — with three in 10 foreign tourists to Palau arriving from Taiwan — Remengesan said he was delighted to see the resumption of flight services between Taipei and Palau, and hoped the charter flights would become regularly scheduled flights in the future.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically