■ TRAVEL
Fuel surcharge to drop
Starting next Friday, domestic airlines will lower fuel surcharges on short-distance and long-distance international flights, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) announced yesterday. The administration had just lowered the surcharge last month as fuel prices dropped to US$146 per barrel. The price has dropped further to US$129.86 per barrel this month, the CAA said. The fuel surcharge for short-distance international flights will drop by US$5 to US$25 per person. The fuel surcharge for long-distance international flights, on the other hand, will drop by US$13 to US$65 per person, the CAA said.
■ POLITICS
Justice nominee questioned
The Legislative Yuan began its preliminary review of President Ma Ying-jeou’s
(馬英九) five grand justice nominees yesterday, with two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators expressing concerns about the qualifications of one of the candidates because of his stand on the sovereignty issue. During a question-and-answer session in the legislature, DPP legislators Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) and Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) questioned nominee Chen Shin-min (陳新民), a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Sun Yat-sen Institute, over a research paper he published in the Journal of the East China University of Politics and Law. The two legislators criticized Chen Shin-min for his paper, which included Taiwan in a discussion of three different autonomy possibilities under a “one nation, two systems” framework. The nominee defended his position, saying that more than half of his original paper had been deleted by editors of the journal and that he was strongly against China’s proposed “one nation, two systems” framework.
■ POLITICS
KMT calls for celebration
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday invited the public to celebrate the Double Ten national day next Friday by putting national flags in front of houses. KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) said during the party’s Central Standing Committee meeting that the party would celebrate the national holiday this year enthusiastically, because it marks the first Double Ten National Day after the KMT regained power. “During the past eight years when the Democratic Progressive Party was in power, we weren’t able to celebrate the Double Ten National Day in a grand manner. We will expand the scope of celebrations this year,” Wu said. The committee passed the proposal, which invited all Taiwanese to hang national flags in front of their houses to celebrate the nation’s birthday together.
■ ENVIRONMENT
Ibises flock to Tainan
Conservationists observed a flock of more than 100 sacred ibises on fallow farmland in Tainan County on Tuesday, after residents reported what they thought was a group of black-faced spoonbills. The migratory spoonbills, an endangered species of wading bird, winter at a wild bird conservation wetland in Tainan County every year. Chiu Jen-wu (邱仁武), chairman of the Tainan County Ecology Conservation Society, said the society doubted the report because it was too early for the endangered birds to arrive in Taiwan. The first spoonbills usually arrive from the north between October and November and do not stop in dry fields, Chiu said. They were therefore not surprised to find that the birds sighted were a flock of 126 sacred ibises, although the birds are rarely seen in such numbers in Taiwan.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
RSS