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Taiwan News Quick Take

■ 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.


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