TOURISM
New fee for driving permits
Foreign visitors would soon be required to pay a fee of NT$150 to get an international driving permit after 30 days in Taiwan, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday. The announcement was made following an amendment to regulations on highway certificate and motor vehicle fees, the ministry said. Visitors from reciprocating countries can currently drive and rent cars for the first 30 days they are in Taiwan with a valid international driver’s license, the Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) said, but added that overseas visitors who stay longer than 30 days need to apply for an international driving permit. In the past, applying for the permit was free, but an administrative fee of NT$150 is to be charged for the permit starting on Monday, the ministry said.
HEALTH
Meal puts dozens in hospital
More than 50 students at a Kaohsiung elementary school have been sent to hospitals due to suspected food poisoning caused by meals provided by the school a day earlier, the Kaohsiung Department of Health said yesterday. Out of about 130 teachers and students who fell ill after eating lunch at Gushan Elementary School in Cishan District (旗山) on Thursday, 52 students were taken to emergency rooms at several hospitals between Thursday evening and yesterday morning, the department said. The suspect meals consisted of braised pork, fish fillets, vegetables and soup, the school said. As some students had complained that the fish fillets tasted bad, the department said that a task force has launched an investigation and taken samples to determine the cause of the food-borne illness. Many of the 52 students have been discharged from the hospitals, the school said.
CRIME
Taiwanese caught in Vietnam
A Taiwanese man was on Wednesday detained by Vietnamese police as part of a drug bust involving the seizure of more than 300kg of heroin in Ho Chi Minh City’s Hoc Mon District, a Vietnamese-language newspaper reported yesterday. Tuoi Tre said on its Web site that the man was identified by Vietnamese media as 33-year-old Taiwanese national Tran Vy, who was arrested with a Vietnamese man when police stopped two vehicles for spot checks. Another Taiwanese suspect is still at large, the newspaper said. A total of 315kg of heroin was discovered in the cars and the men admitted to being on their way to Hoc Mon to deliver the drugs, it said. Citing local police, the newspaper said that another two Taiwanese are wanted for questioning in relation to the case. The men are allegedly part of a drug trafficking ring that has been smuggling narcotics into Kaohsiung, the newspaper said.
TRAVEL
NZ carrier adding flights
Air New Zealand, which resumed direct flights between Auckland and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in November last year, yesterday said that it would add more flights to the route from Oct. 27. Currently flying three round-trip flights on the route per week, the airline said it would add one more between Oct. 27 and Dec. 7, and two more between Dec. 8 and Feb. 23 next year. This would bring the total number of flights to between four and five per week, the carrier said. Air New Zealand expressed confidence in the move as the country’s statistics showed that mutual visits between Taiwan and New Zealand grew 40 percent year-on-year within three months of the launch of the route.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai