TOURISM
Maokong Gondola shut down
The Maokong Gondola yesterday experienced a system shutdown at 1:54pm owing to a malfunction of its CPU circuit board and 180 passengers were evacuated immediately before the system resumed operation at 3:25pm, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said. According to the TRTC, the CPU circuit board had not malfunctioned since the launch of the cable car system in 2007. The company said it successfully resumed operation after replacing the circuit board parts. A total of 180 passengers were on the cable car when the system was shut down, and the TRTC arranged shuttle buses to take passengers back to stations, the TRTC said.
ENVIRONMENT
Lights out in Zhongshan
Residents in areas around the Presidential Office, Taipei 101 and several communities in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) have been invited to switch off their lights at 8:30pm today for an hour to support the international “Earth Hour” campaign. A total of seven communities in the district’s Jiantan borough will take part for the first time in the campaign that gathers participants from 130 countries, said Wu Chia-ling (鄔嘉綾), an executive at the Society of Wilderness, which is leading a carbon emission-reduction drive in Taiwan. Wu said the organizer would assign instructors to the communities involved to assist in the event. The head of Jiantan borough will lead residents to the streets to enjoy an hour of quiet darkness and to pray for the victims of the March 11 earthquake in Japan, he said.
CRIME
Fraud rings relocated: MOFA
More than 650 Taiwanese nationals have been arrested in South Korea and Thailand for alleged involvement in telecommunications fraud cases since September 2006, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said on Thursday. The suspects, 439 in South Korea and 235 in Thailand, were mostly recruited by fraud rings with bases there to open bank accounts or collect money from victims, the ministry said. The telecommunications fraud rings, once very active in Taiwan and China, have recently relocated to South Korea and countries in Southeast Asia after Taiwan and China forged an agreement in 2009 to jointly crack down on cross-strait crime, according to police sources. The ministry called on the public to be on guard against traps set by fraud rings, which usually offer high incentives in order to recruit Taiwanese to work in foreign countries or provide their ID cards, bank accounts or credit cards for illegal use.
HEALTH
Holistic approach approved
A trial of a different healthcare approach in selected hospitals in Taiwan has proven suitable for adoption in a greater number of hospitals and will be launched on July 1, according to the Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI). The “patient-centered” care approach adopted by 190 hospitals nationwide since late 2009 has helped cut unnecessary spending and allocate medical resources more efficiently, a BNHI division chief in charge of hospital affairs said. The approach refers to treating patients in a holistic manner, as opposed to the current case-by-case system. The bureau cited drawbacks to the current healthcare system by referring to cases in which patients being treated by cardiologists might have to come back days later to see gastroenterologists for stomach problems. In some extreme cases, statistics show that about 1 percent of patients in Taiwan visit the same facility more than 100 times a year.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
The US’ joint strikes with Israel on Iran dismantled a key pillar of China’s regional strategy, removing an important piece in Beijing’s potential Taiwan Strait scenario, said Zineb Riboua, a senior researcher at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Peace and Security. In an article titled: “The Iran Question Is All About China,” Riboua said that understanding the Iran issue in the context of China’s “grand strategy” is essential to fully grasp the complexity of the situation. Beijing has spent billions of dollars over the years turning Iran into a “structural strategic asset,” diverting US military resources in the
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