■FILM
‘KATZ Fun’ debuts in US
The Taiwan-made 3D animated cartoon KATZ Fun has made its debut on TV channels in the US and will air for three months in its first season, a manager of Bright Ideas Design said yesterday. “Season one of this cartoon series, comprising 13 episodes, will be broadcast on TV channels in 17 states in the US,” international marketing manager Erica Lee said. The company had spent four years and NT$60 million (US$1.88 million) to develop the cartoon. “KATZ Fun is the story of a mystical tiger named Katz who helps children develop their potential talents,” Lee said. Bright Ideas Design is a digital content development company in Taiwan. It stepped into the field of animated cartoons after cooperating with the National Palace Museum to combine art and humanities with digital technology to show the beauty of art. Lee said the company was also in final talks with potential buyers from Southeast Asia. Some representatives of TV channels from South Africa and Europe have also expressed interest in the animation, she said.
■EDUCATION
Ministry adds calligraphy
Chinese calligraphy lessons will be integrated into the curriculums for people training to be Mandarin teachers in elementary and junior high schools in Taiwan within three years, Yang Chang-yu (楊昌裕), director of the Ministry of Education’s Department of Elementary Education said yesterday. Yang said the ministry decided to require teachers to learn calligraphy skills because no higher education institution in Taiwan maintains a calligraphy department and few teachers know the skill, and therefore are unable to teach it to students. The ministry will also study the possibility of making Chinese calligraphy part of the school curricula, Yang said.
■DEFENSE
MND donates fighter jet
The Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday that it has donated a retired F-5 fighter jet to the Yanks Air Museum in Los Angeles. The museum held a ceremony to mark the donation of the aircraft, with the chief of the nation’s Defense Mission to the US, Major General Po Hung-hui (伯鴻輝), representing the MND at the ceremony. In December 2008 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the MND to donate a retired combat aircraft and two retired jet engines to the museum. The aircraft was freshly painted before leaving Taitung air base for the US. The fighter, with the two engines, left Keelung in November and arrived in Los Angeles in January, the MND said.
■TRAVEL
Kaohsiung welcomes ship
The luxury cruise liner Europa moored in Kaohsiung Harbor yesterday, bringing more than 300 tourists — mostly from Germany. Welcomed by drummers on the wharf, the 338 tourists disembarked for a one-day tour of the city. Tony Wu (巫宗霖), director of the Tourist Service Center at Kaohsiung International Airport, said the government’s goal was to attract more tourists like these to stay in the country for more than one day. The global market for ocean cruises is growing and seems to have been unaffected by the global financial crisis, Wu said. Last year, Taiwan hosted more than 30 liners, each of which had thousands of passengers on board, he said. To persuade cruise operators to put Taiwan on their itineraries, the Tourism Bureau has been promoting Taiwan overseas and offers mooring discounts, he said. Each tourist on the Europa spent an average of around NT$2,000 in Kaohsiung, he said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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