■ 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.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
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