■ 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.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard