■ TRANSPORTATION
Wenhu track catches fire
The Wenhu Line on Taipei City’s MRT system experienced another problem yesterday when a track caught fire. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said the incident happened at Wende station at 1:38pm. Service was interrupted and shuttle buses were offered to commuters between Jiannan Road and Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center stations. Service resumed at 2:16pm when back-up systems switched on. Preliminary investigations showed a 50cm cable had burned. TRTC said it needed more time to determine what caused the fire and how many passengers were affected. The Wenhu Line, an extension of the Muzha Line, was inaugurated in July last year and has since suffered more than 100 malfunctions. The first major incident happened on July 10, when a power outage brought the line to a halt, stranding approximately 700 passengers on trains between stations and forcing them to walk to nearby stations along the tracks.
■ DIPLOMACY
St Kitts post upgraded
The Federation of St Kitts and Nevis has upgraded its representative to Taiwan from charge d’affaires to resident ambassador. Jasmine Huggins, St Kitts’ first ambassador to Taiwan, presented her letters of credit to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday in Taipei. Huggins said at a reception later that her new appointment as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary signals a deepening of the friendship between Basseterre and Taipei and is a significant milestone in her diplomatic career. “When I was asked to come to Taiwan to establish the [St Kitts] embassy … I could not have imagined that my acceptance of that grave responsibility would have taken me on this remarkable journey that would grant me such enormous professional and personal satisfaction,” she said.
■ JUSTICE
Groups to protest for Chen
Pro-independence groups announced yesterday they would hold a rally on May 8 — one day before Mother’s Day — against what they say is the unfair detention of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). The Taiwan High Court ruled last week to continue to detain Chen for another two months, despite attempts by family members to wire back NT$700 million (US$22.2 million) the family has frozen in Swiss bank accounts. The groups said the rally would be a personal appeal from Chen’s mother, Chen Lee Shen (陳李慎). “Chen Lee Shen was crying so hard after the ruling that she is going blind in one eye,” organizers said. The rally is scheduled to take place on both Ketagalan Boulevard and in front of the legislature’s side door on Jinan Road in Taipei City.
■ EDUCATION
KMT to reinstate scholarship
After a 10-year hiatus, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could decide to reinstate the Sun Yat-sen scholarships, a party official said. President Ma and KMT Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) could soon be invited to give oral tests to candidates, as both were recipients of the scholarship and have good command of the English language, said Lin Yung-juei (林永瑞), a KMT official in charge of administrative management. Ma, who doubles as KMT chairman, will meet KMT officials on Thursday for discussions on reinstating the scholarship, established in 1960 to send talented young people abroad for advanced studies in different disciplines. The plan is for 10 young men and women, under 40 years of age, to receive the scholarships worth NT$15 million this year, Lin said.
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
NUMBERS IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
Temperatures are forecast to drop steadily as a continental cold air mass moves across Taiwan, with some areas also likely to see heavy rainfall, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. From today through early tomorrow, a cold air mass would keep temperatures low across central and northern Taiwan, and the eastern half of Taiwan proper, with isolated brief showers forecast along Keelung’s north coast, Taipei and New Taipei City’s mountainous areas and eastern Taiwan, it said. Lows of 11°C to 15°C are forecast in central and northern Taiwan, Yilan County, and the outlying Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, and 14°C to 17°C
STEERING FAILURE: The first boat of its class is experiencing teething issues as it readies for acceptance by the navy, according to a recent story about rudder failure The Hai Kun (海鯤), the nation’s first locally built submarine, allegedly suffered a total failure of stern hydraulic systems during the second round of sea acceptance trials on June 26, and sailors were forced to manually operate the X-rudder to turn the submarine and return to port, news Web site Mirror Daily reported yesterday. The report said that tugboats following the Hai Kun assisted the submarine in avoiding collisions with other ships due to the X-rudder malfunctioning. At the time of the report, the submarine had completed its trials and was scheduled to begin diving and surfacing tests in shallow areas. The X-rudder,
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