TOURISM
Officials visit Beijing
A delegation of tourism officials from Greater Kaohsiung is set to meet with their Beijing counterparts in China to promote tourism in southern Taiwan, city government officials said yesterday. The delegation, led by Greater Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau Director-General Chen Sheng-shan (陳盛山) arrived in Hong Kong on Tuesday to promote the city and will have discussions with China’s National Tourism Administration in Beijing today on the possibility of increasing the daily number of Chinese tourists allowed to visit the city, the officials said. Bureau officials cited tallies from the National Immigration Agency showing that the number of travelers arriving and departing at Kaohsiung International Airport from January to October last year reached 232,752.
DIPLOMACY
Ma touts passport changes
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that a new policy requiring passport applications be filed in person, which is scheduled to be implemented in July, would help reduce passport forgery and boost the nation’s chances of gaining visa-free entry privileges from the US. The drop in the US visa refusal rate for Taiwanese to 2.2 percent last year is also favorable to Taiwan’s bid, Ma told a visiting delegation from Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Ma said that getting included in the US visa-waiver program was one of the government’s goals. The other two are signing an extradition agreement and purchasing F-16 C/D fighters from the US, he said.
EDUCATION
School return date set
The Ministry of Education yesterday said that elementary and junior high schools would start the spring semester on Feb. 14 following the winter break instead of the originally planned Feb. 11. The decision was made on Tuesday at a meeting between ministry officials, local government officials and representatives of parents, teachers and principals’ associations, Vice Minister of Education Chen Yi-hsing (陳益興) said. The change came after parents in northern Taiwan called for postponing the new semester’s first school day to allow children to have an uninterrupted vacation. Feb. 11 is a Friday, which would mean children would have to attend school for just one day, followed by a weekend. The postponement was first agreed to by the New Taipei City (新北市) Government, with Taipei City and Keelung following suit. These moves prompted the ministry to convene the meeting to seek a national consensus.
EVENTS
Flora expo visitors top 3m
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and Taipei International Flora Expo organizers yesterday gathered at the expo as the number of visitors to the six-month-long event broke the 3 million mark. The 3 millionth visitor showed up at around noon yesterday, which was about three weeks after the 2 millionth visitor was tallied. The biggest prize was a hotel voucher worth NT$50,000. Hau said the city would offer bigger prizes as the number of visitors to the event continued to grow. In response to concerns about the expo’s failure to attract over 7 million visitors as it was estimated, Ting Hsi-yung (丁錫鏞), general producer of the expo, said the average number of daily visitors to the expo dropped from 40,000 to 20,000 because of cold weather, but added that the expo remained confident of reaching the goal as the event is expected to attract big crowds during the upcoming Lunar New Year holidays.
The Taipei Summer Festival is to begin tomorrow at Dadaocheng Wharf (大稻埕), featuring four themed firework shows and five live music performances throughout the month, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism said today. The festival in the city’s Datong District (大同) is to run until Aug. 30, holding firework displays on Wednesdays and the final Saturday of the event. The first show is scheduled for tomorrow, followed by Aug. 13, 20 and 30. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Disney Pixar's movie Toy Story, the festival has partnered with Walt Disney Co (Taiwan) to host a special themed area on
Aftershocks from a magnitude 6.2 earthquake that struck off Yilan County at 3:45pm yesterday could reach a magnitude of 5 to 5.5, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Seismological Center technical officer Chiu Chun-ta (邱俊達) told a news conference that the epicenter of the temblor was more than 100km from Taiwan. Although predicted to measure between magnitude 5 and 5.5, the aftershocks would reach an intensity of 1 on Taiwan’s 7-tier scale, which gauges the actual effect of an earthquake, he said. The earthquake lasted longer in Taipei because the city is in a basin, he said. The quake’s epicenter was about 128.9km east-southeast
BE CAREFUL: The virus rarely causes severe illness or death, but newborns, older people and those with medical conditions are at risk of more severe illness As more than 7,000 cases of chikungunya fever have been reported in China’s Guangdong Province this year, including 2,892 new cases last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday said it is monitoring the situation and considering raising the travel notice level, which might be announced today. The CDC issued a level 1 travel notice, or “watch,” for Guangdong Province on July 22, citing an outbreak in Foshan, a manufacturing hub in the south of the province, that was reported early last month. Between July 27 and Saturday, the province reported 2,892 new cases of chikungunya, reaching a total of 7,716
STAY VIGILANT: People should reduce the risk of chronic liver inflammation by avoiding excessive alcohol consumption, smoking and eating pickled foods, the physician said A doctor last week urged people to look for five key warning signs of acute liver failure after popular producer-turned-entertainer Shen Yu-lin (沈玉琳) was reportedly admitted to an intensive care unit for fulminant hepatitis. Fulminant hepatitis is the rapid and massive death of liver cells, impairing the organ’s detoxification, metabolic, protein synthesis and bile production functions, which if left untreated has a mortality rate as high as 80 percent, according to the Web site of Advancing Clinical Treatment of Liver Disease, an international organization focused on liver disease prevention and treatment. People with hepatitis B or C are at higher risk of
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