TRANSPORTATION
Taichung MRT line tested
A seven-day trial of the Green Line of the Taichung MRT system has been completed successfully ahead of its official launch next year, the city’s Transportation Bureau said yesterday. The trial run, which was conducted between 6am and midnight from July 1 through Thursday, was to ensure that the driverless system was stable along the 16.71km line, bureau director-general Yeh Chao-fu (葉昭甫) said. However, the bureau said that it has been looking for ways to improve the system’s sound insulation after people complained about noise during the test run. The Green Line, which has been under construction since 2009, has 18 stations, one of which is to connect to the Taichung high-speed rail station, while three others are to connect to stations along the Taiwan Railways Administration’s Taichung line, the bureau said. The Taichung MRT has a Blue Line that runs through 18 stations along a 26.2km route. It would be extended in the future, in keeping with the city’s transportation expansion plans, the bureau said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Kinmen music festival a hit
The Kinmen Summer Music Festival featuring popular singers and bands wrapped up four days of festivities on Friday. After the success of last year’s Quemoy International Music Festival, the Kinmen Tourism Department decided to hold another four-day music event at Houhu Seashore Park in Jinning Township (金寧) from Tuesday to Friday. This year, the festivities included performances by singer-songwriter Christine Fan (范瑋琪), who has a following of more than 3 million on Facebook. The venue also featured several young bands, such as Suitcase, known for their Indie rock music, and Candy Kinmen Girls, a dance group formed by local schoolchildren. The concert was held from 7pm to 9:30pm each night, and included performances by street performers, as well as water slides, magic shows and fireworks. A highlight this year was an aerial light show created by drones that included puzzle images and the sentence “I Love Kinmen.” The cartoon fixtures that were put on Houhu beach (後湖) for the festival will remain there for people to take pictures until Sept. 2, the department said.
CRIME
Egyptian charged with arson
An Egyptian man was on Friday arrested and charged with arson after allegedly starting a fire in a night market in Kaohsiung. The man, who has a food stand in Kaohsiung’s Rueifong Night Market (瑞豐夜市), allegedly poured gasoline along an alleyway and set it on fire, police said, citing eyewitnesses. According to the eyewitnesses, the man was shouting curses as he ran from the scene, the Kaohsiung City Police Department said. After the incident was reported to the police at about 2am, firefighters rushed to the scene, but the fire had died down and there were no injuries, the department said. The police searched Zuoying District (左營), where the night market is located, and found the suspect at a convenience store, the department said. The man said he was upset because other vendors had been trying to force him out of the night market, police said. The suspect was arrested, questioned and handed over to the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office, police said. Earlier, the Chinese-language United Daily News had cited the man’s business partner as saying the two lit the fire after seeing a large number of cockroaches on the ground while they were closing the stall.
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