More than 1,200 Taiwanese tourists in Thailand were reported safe, the Tourism Bureau said yesterday, one day after a travel alert for the flood-stricken country was raised to the highest “red” level.
Of the 61 tour groups currently traveling in Thailand, nine groups of 180 people were scheduled to return to Taiwan yesterday, while the remaining 52 groups of 1,040 people would continue with their itinerary, the bureau said.
“Fortunately, most Taiwanese visitors were not in flood-affected areas,” bureau division deputy director Chen Chiung-hua (陳瓊華) said. “We strongly warn against non-essential trips to Thailand at this time.”
On Thursday, the Thai government opened 13 flood gates and channeled the water through Bangkok to divert it out to sea.
The release of the water was expected to submerge part of the capital, cause power shortages and cut the water supply, resulting in problems with accommodation, transportation, the food supply and public hygiene, a statement released by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday.
As a result, Lion Travel Service Co, a major local travel agency, said all its Thailand-bound tours would be suspended before Tuesday. However, as its 33 tour groups of more than 400 Taiwanese tourists currently in Thailand would not necessarily visit Bangkok or stay there only briefly, the agency said no changes would be made to the itineraries of those groups.
Thailand is suffering from its worst monsoon floods in decades, resulting in more than 340 deaths and economic losses of at least US$6 billion since July.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift