TRAVEL
Flight fares could drop
The price of domestic flight tickets could drop again if fuel prices continue to slide over the next few months, the Civil Aeronautics Administration said yesterday. The agency said it could activate the mechanism to adjust domestic flight ticket prices if the average aviation fuel price stays at NT$21.74 per liter for three months in a row, adding that the mechanism could be activated again if the average fuel price falls to NT$16.23 per liter in the next three months. The agency said that the average fuel price in the past three months was NT$18 per liter, which is only NT$1.77 away from fulfilling the requirement to readjust ticket prices.
ENTERTAINMENT
Dead actress honored
Actress Yang Ko-han (楊可涵), who committed suicide last month, was nominated for the Best Leading Actress Award at the Golden Bell Awards. The Bureau of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development, the organizer of the national television awards, announced the shortlist for various categories on Wednesday. Yang, along with Janel Tsai (蔡淑臻), Chu Chih-ying (朱芷瑩), Ruby Lin (林心如) and Huang Pei-jia (黃姵嘉), were nominated for the Best Leading Actress Award in the category of TV drama. The jury for the 50th Golden Bell Awards said that Yang was nominated for her outstanding performance in The New World (新世界). Yang’s agent thanked the jury for recognizing Yang’s performance, adding that “she would be happy to hear that in heaven.” The 27-year-old actress attempted to take her own life at her home on July 6 and was declared dead at a hospital on July 18 after attempts to revive her failed. She said before her death that winning a Golden Bell award would fulfill her greatest dream.
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