■ Business
Ma Ying-jeou to visit US
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is scheduled to visit the US in August to entice investment from the high-tech sector, a Taipei City Government official said yesterday. Ma is planning to visit Massachusetts, Penn-sylvania and California, where many renowned high-tech industries are located, to plug Taipei's investment environment, the official said. Ma will focus on enticing companies in the wireless communications, venture capital and biotechnology sectors, and will encourage them to sign letters of intent and set up Asian operational hubs, or research and development centers in the city, the official said.
■ Tourism
Japanese staying away
The private sector and the government will join forces in an all-out effort to attract Japanese tourists, an industry source said yesterday. Affected by circumstances mitigating against tourist interest in both Taiwan and Japan, Taiwan had to do its best to upgrade its attractions and inject new incentives into its tourism campaigns aimed at courting the lucrative Japanese market, the source said. To achieve a government target of luring more than 1 million tourists from Japan this year, Taiwan had to offer more appeal in the face of a decline in arrivals, the source added. The number of Japanese tourists has dropped since the beginning of the year. Statistics compiled by the Tourism Bureau show that the number of arrivals fell by 38 percent in January and 32 percent in February compared to last year's figures. The figure for last month was not expected to improve because of tensions surrounding the March 20 presidential election, the source said.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
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