THSRC cuts discount
The 4 percent discount on high-speed rail tickets offered during off-peak hours is to be cut by one hour from tomorrow, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) said. The off-peak hours are from 9am to 12:35pm, and after 8pm to the end of service from Monday to Thursday. However, due to the large number of passengers in the morning, off-peak hours are to be adjusted to between 9:30am and 12pm, the company said. After 8pm is still considered off-peak under the new measure. According to THSRC’s schedule, fares on eight trains per day will be affected by the schedule change. The company said that the 10 percent to 35 percent discount on tickets purchased between five and 28 days prior to departure will not be affected by the new policy.
SOCIETY
Most naturalized by marriage
The majority of people who last year became naturalized Republic of China (ROC) citizens were spouses of Taiwanese citizens, with nearly 70 percent from Vietnam, government data released yesterday show. Last year, 3,252 people were naturalized, a decrease of 360, or 10 percent, from the year prior, the Ministry of the Interior said. The drop reflected a decline beginning in 2005 in the number of international marriages, the ministry said. It is believed that as the economies of Southeast Asia and China continue to grow, fewer women from those countries choose to leave their home to marry abroad, including to Taiwanese men. A total of 93.8 percent of last year’s naturalized citizens were women, 90.7 percent were married to Taiwanese, and 68.5 percent were from Vietnam, the ministry said. Meanwhile, 623 Taiwanese gave up their citizenship, with 94.7 percent doing so voluntarily, the ministry said.
AVIATION
Alcohol tests made mandatory
As of early June, every pilot working for a Taiwanese airline is to be given a blood alcohol test before flying, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said on Friday. The new regulation is to affect more than 2,800 pilots, including those in general civil aviation transport, common aviation industries and at flying schools, the agency said. Local aviation companies perform alcohol tests on only about 30 percent of their pilots, the CAA said. Testing is to be expanded at the demand of the legislature after two Taiwanese carriers — Far Eastern Air Transport and China Airlines — reported pilots who had a higher alcohol concentration level than the legal limit during random checks, the CAA said. Although such cases are rare, the CAA said it would not tolerate any breaches and is adopting the regulation to proactively prevent pilots from flying under the influence of alcohol.
MEDIA
Hakka Radio to air in June
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Saturday said that Hakka Radio would be launched in June, describing it as a “major step” to propagate and spread the language. During an appearance at Hsinchu County’s Tung Blossom Festival, Tsai said Hakka is a national language and it needs to be more widely used. Hakka Radio is to be launched by the Hakka Affairs Council, the president said, adding that in conjunction with Hakka television and radio, it is a “major step” toward ethnic transitional justice. The radio station is to broadcast nationwide and its purpose is to promote Hakka language and culture and foster ethnic groups’ access to media and give them a voice in cultural development, the council said.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: