AIRLINES
Starlux unveils new route
Starlux Airlines on Dec. 2 is to launch a new route between Taichung and Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture, it said in a statement yesterday. Starlux is to operate four round-trip flights on the new route every week, with tickets available now for purchase, it said. The airline would use Airbus A321neos with 188 seats, eight of which are business class and the rest economy class, it said. With flights between Taichung and Vietnam’s Phu Quoc Island to begin on Oct. 27, the Okinawa route would be the fourth scheduled overseas destination from Taichung provided by Starlux, with the other two to Macau and Da Nang in Vietnam, it said. The airline also operates charter flights between Taichung and Takamatsu in Japan’s Kagawa Prefecture.
DIPLOMACY
AIT names new official
A former aide to former US secretary of state John Kerry has assumed the post of cultural affairs officer at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the de facto US embassy in Taiwan announced on Monday. Anne Foss, former special assistant to the under-secretary for public diplomacy at the US Department of State, as well as a special assistant to Kerry when he was secretary, began her new role in Taipei on Monday last week, the AIT said.
DIPLOMACY
Swedish delegation visits
A parliamentary group from Sweden is visiting Taiwan to better understand the country’s democratization and the situation across the Taiwan Strait, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday. The cross-party delegation from the Swedish-Taiwanese Parliamentarian Association is led by Lotta Johnsson Fornarve of the Left Party. It also includes John Weinerhall of the Moderate Party, a member on the committee on defense, and Goran Hargestam of the Sweden Democrats, a member of the committee on foreign affairs. The association has long been a firm supporter of Taiwan in the Swedish parliament and strongly backs Taiwan’s meaningful participation in world bodies such as the WHO, the ministry said, adding that it hopes the visit would help boost two-way parliamentary interactions and enhance the delegation members’ understanding of Taiwan’s democratic development and cross-strait situation.
SOCIETY
Man dies after leak
A 19-year-old man died on Monday night after having been in a coma following a carbon dioxide leak on Tuesday last week at an onshore construction site for an offshore wind farm in Changhua County. The man, surnamed Chien (簡), was one of three people who went into cardiac arrest at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park site during the incident. Chien had no heartbeat when he was found and was rushed to Tungs’ Taichung MetroHarbor Hospital. He was put in an intensive care unit with a coma scale of three, the lowest possible score, indicating no eye opening, verbal response or motor response. The site’s main contractor, Teco Electric & Machinery Co, in a statement yesterday offered condolences to Chien’s family and pledged to provide assistance to the family and the other workers who were injured. The two others who were found without vital signs were a 58-year-old man surnamed Liu (劉) and a 38-year-old man surnamed Lai (賴). Both were in intensive care with coma scales of three. The other 14 workers who were injured had all been discharged from hospital.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
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