SOCIETY
Peak ATM hours announced
The Consumer Protection Commission yesterday said peak hours for cash withdrawals from ATMs would be mornings and afternoons from today until Thursday, and advised customers to check with their banks on daily limits for withdrawals and transfers. The commission said the hours between 11am and 2pm, and 5pm and 7pm during the two days prior to the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, as well as the first two days of the New Year, would be peak hours for ATM use. People seeking to avoid standing in line should avoid these times. Customers should also avoid using ATMs they have never used before and keep the printed receipts in case the machine malfunctions.
TRANSPORTATION
Scooter statistics released
The area formerly known as Kaohsiung County ranked No. 1 in terms of the number of scooters per 100 residents last year, while Taipei posted the lowest number, according to a statement released by Directorate--General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics. Last year, for every 100 Kaohsiung County residents, there were 83 scooters on average, the statement said, which cited the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. Taipei reported a scooter ownership rate of 41.8 percent, the statistics showed. Meanwhile, more motor vehicles were registered last year, with scooters showing the biggest increase from a year earlier, the statistics showed. A total of 21.72 million motor vehicles were registered last year, up 1.6 percent from 2009. The number of scooters registered rose 1.7 percent to reach 14.85 million in the same period, the report said. Last year, 6.88 million cars and pickup trucks were registered, a 1.6 percent increase from the previous year.
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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