■ diplomacy
JIA names new boss
The Japanese Interchange Association (JIA) has decided to appoint Masaki Saito, a former Japanese ambassador to New Zealand, to serve as Japan’s chief representative in Taiwan, the Tokyo Shimbun reported yesterday. Saito will replace Tadashi Ikeda as the head of the association’s Taipei Office, Japan’s de facto embassy, the report said. Saito, 64, a career diplomat who specializes in Chinese affairs, has served as minister at the Japanese embassy in China and ambassador to Cambodia. He joined Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1966. Saito will be the second member of the ministry’s “China School” — an institute dedicated to the study and understanding of Chinese issues — to serve as the nation’s top representative in Taiwan. The first was Ikeda, who took up his post in Taipei in 2005.
■ health
Market goes smoke-free
Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (�?]) promoted the nation’s first non-smoking traditional market on Saturday as the city marked World No Tobacco Day, describing it as a new milestone in his campaign to turn Tainan into a smoking-free city. The city has a non-smoking road near National Cheng Kung University, plus 18 parks, one tourist area in Anping and four historical sites where smoking is not allowed, Hsu said. He said the ban might generate opposition, but a majority of the market’s visitors are women and that everyone visiting the market deserves not to be exposed to second-hand smoke. The ban should not affect business because the market has a good management system and its vendors were good businesspeople, he said. Hsu urged local residents to cooperate with the smoking bans.
■ transportation
MRT fares unchanged
Kaohsiung City will not follow Taipei’s lead in temporarily discounting MRT fares to encourage more people to use public transport. The Kaohsiung MRT fare is NT$12 per ride, regardless of the distance traveled and passengers are entitled to a free bus transfer. Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said that Taipei’s MRT system was completely funded by the government, but Kaohsiung’s system was built using the BOT (build-operate-transfer) model, so the city government could not unilaterally decide to extend the preferential fares because this would affect the Kaohsiung Rapid Transport Corp’s revenues. She did promise, however, to provide more incentives to encourage the public to use public transportation. On Friday, the Taipei City Government announced that MRT fares for EasyCards users would be reduced by an additional 5 percent between yesterday and Aug. 31, bringing the total Easy Card discount to 25 percent for the summer.
■ earthquakes
Quake hits near channel
An earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale occurred off the southeast coast yesterday, but there were no reports of any casualties. The Central Weather Bureau said the magnitude 6.8 quake struck at 9:57am and had been felt faintly in Taiwan. The bureau said that the epicenter was located in the Pacific Ocean about 560km southeast of Taipei, close to the Bashi Channel that separates Taiwan and the Philippines. The earthquake’s epicenter was located as deep as 46km below the surface of the ocean.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai