TOURISM
Taiwan-Japan travel surges
Travel between Taiwan and Japan is expected to reach about 4 million tourists by the end of the year, based on the current momentum, the Tourism Bureau said yesterday. The number of Japanese visitors to Taiwan has continued to soar, despite the depreciation of the Japanese yen and that country’s sales-tax increase, which has affected its outbound travel, tourism official Cheng Yi-ping (鄭憶萍) said. According to the bureau’s statistics, 1.04 million Japanese visited Taiwan in the first eight months of the year, a 17.95 percent year-on-year increase. Meanwhile, about 2 million Taiwanese tourists traveled to Japan in the same period, about 25 percent more than in the same period last year, Cheng said. Tourism authorities on both sides are optimistic about an annual goal of 4 million mutual visits this year and 5 million in the near future, she said.
TRANSPORTATION
Kinmen links assessed
A proposal by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to establish marine links that pass waters near Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen County will depend on a national security assessment, Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) said yesterday. The proposed opening of the Liuwudian Channel to connect the deep-water Liuwudian Harbor in China’s southeastern Xiamen City and Taiwan will need to be appraised by national defense officials, Yeh said in response to lawmakers’ questions in the Legislature. Opposition Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) said the ministry’s plan to open the narrow channel to Chinese shippers could threaten Taiwan’s national security. However, Yeh Kuang-shih said the shipping route would not be opened at the expense of national safety.
POLITICS
Election neutrality urged
Examination Yuan President Wu Jin-lin (伍錦霖) yesterday called for neutrality before the Nov. 29 elections for mayors and local representatives, which have been called Taiwan’s mid-term elections because they are expected to set the stage for the 2016 presidential and legislative elections. Examination Yuan Secretary-General Lee Jih-shyuan (李繼玄) said between 700,000 and 800,000 civil servants across the country have taken courses on administrative neutrality and are familiar with the principle of keeping administrative duties independent from political leanings. The Ministry of Civil Service under the Examination Yuan issued a notice to government agencies on Sept. 29 to abide by neutrality rules. Among these, it is “not appropriate” for civil servants to connect to social media such as Facebook or Plurk during office hours or using office equipment, the ministry said.
DIPLOMACY
Panama’s first lady visits
Panama’s first lady Lorena Isabel Castillo de Varela is seeking to learn more about Taiwan’s social welfare programs during her six-day visit for National Day celebrations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. In line with her interests, Castillo de Varela yesterday was accompanied by Taiwan’s first lady, Chow Mei-ching (周美青), on a visit to a care center for the elderly and is also to pay a visit to the Sunshine Social Welfare Foundation, both in Taipei, the ministry said. “Panama’s first lady is dedicated to caring for the impoverished, the elderly and children, and has set up an office to help those groups,” Department of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs spokesman Antonio Yeh (葉德貴) said. “She therefore wanted to see how welfare facilities here are run and to learn from the Taiwan experience.”
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
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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