■ TRANSPORTATION
City to offer travel card
Kaohsiung City's Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Bureau plans to issue a travel card at the end of this month to offer a range of preferential services, with the aim of boosting ridership, bureau director-general Chen Kai-ling (陳凱凌) said yesterday. The city government will use its air pollution control fund to finance the card, which can be used to pay for travel by air, train, bus, MRT and ferry, Chen said. If cardholders make good use of the various special offers that will come with the card, they will be able to enjoy discounts of up to 40 percent on Kaohsiung MRT fares, compared with the 15 percent discount offered to I-Pass holders. The MRT bureau will target mainly corporate commuters, Chen said, adding that employees who apply for the card through their companies will get the best discounts for travel on the MRT. In addition, for each NT$200 put on the stored value card by consumers, the city will add NT$50, Chen said.
■ POLITICS
DPP drafts policy guidelines
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said its planned “10-year policy guidelines” are not intended to replace the party's political platform but address the challenges the nation will face over the coming decade. Liu Chien-sin (劉建忻), deputy executive director of the DPP's Policy Research and Coordination Committee, said the platform is an outline of the DPP's basic policy position, while the “10-year policy guidelines” will offer flexible strategies to resolve problems facing the country. The party will unveil its first-ever “guidelines” at its national congress in August, he said. The party will hold four seminars over the coming weeks to solicit expert opinion in drafting the guidelines, he added. These will take place on Sunday, April 22, April 24 and May 2 and address four different topics — Taiwan's aging population, the next wave of ecological disasters, new economic development strategies for Taiwan in the face of globalization and Taiwan's strategy amid a fluid international situation.
■ EDUCATION
Ma, Harvard to hold talks
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) will hold a video conference with faculty and students from his alma mater, Harvard University, today, to talk about Taiwan's democracy, economy, foreign policy and cross-strait relations. During the conference call, Ma will also answer questions raised by participants on the development of cross-strait relations and those between Taipei and Washington. US academics taking part in the discussion will include William Kirby, director of Harvard University’s Fairbank
Center for Chinese Studies; Steven Goldstein, head of the center’s Taiwan research pane; and professors William Alford and David Wang. Former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi (蘇起), who left for the US last week, will take part in the conference that will begin at 7:30am Taiwan time.
■ TOURISM
Keelung hosts cruise ship
More than 3,800 passengers aboard a luxury cruise liner arrived in Keelung Harbor yesterday, the largest number ever to arrive at the port aboard a single ship, Keelung Harbor Bureau said. The Bermuda-registered Diamond Princess, carrying 2,725 tourists — mostly from Europe and the US — and 1,100 crewmembers, was scheduled to leave for Hong Kong early that same evening, the bureau said. Upon arriving the tourists were greeted by 60 tour buses that whisked them away on a one-day tour of northern Taiwan.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
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
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
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
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