TOURISM
Tainan cruise to start Friday
A sightseeing cruise along Tainan’s old transport canal is to launch on Friday, the city’s Tourism Bureau said. The cruise is to pass under some of the city’s old bridges, bureau head Sue Wang (王時思) said, adding that passengers will have to duck to avoid hitting some of the lower bridges. The attraction offers a unique experience for visitors, she said. The 10km tour, which is to take passengers to some of the city’s popular destinations in the historic Anping District (安平), is to last about an hour, depending on the tide, the bureau said.
POLITICS
Ex-official denied China visit
Former Presidential Office secretary-general Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) was denied permission to travel to China next month, because the travel restriction on him as a former official who had access to top-level information still applies and his application was submitted too late, Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said on Monday. Tseng, who served in the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), on Dec. 6 applied for approval to visit China, Huang said, adding that Tseng had planned to set off tomorrow to visit Taiwanese businesspeople and students. However, Tseng, now a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman, failed to submit his travel application 20 days before his planned departure date as stipulated by the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法). The act stipulates that former presidents, premiers, government ministers and certain other officials with high levels of security clearance are required to gain approval for overseas travel within three years of leaving office.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
RSS