A Chinese aviation official has sent a letter to the head of the Taipei Airlines Association (TAA), inviting him to further discuss the details of charter flights during the Lunar New Year holiday for Taiwanese businesspeople based in China.
Pu Zhaozhou (浦照洲), executive director of the China Civil Aviation Association, asked TAA head Michael Lo (樂大信) to lead a delegation of Taiwanese airlines executives to visit China to talk about technical and operational details of the cross-strait charter flights. The meeting place has yet to be set.
Pu said that with less than one month before the Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 9, Taiwan needs to produce a list of names for the delegation and suggest a possible venue for the meeting soon so that arrangements can be made.
This will be the follow-up to a secret meeting between Pu and Lo earlier this month. Lo, at the behest of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), went to Macau where he and Pu reportedly reached an agreement on the charter flights.
Pu, who is also the director of the Office of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs under the Civil Aviation Administration of China, sent the letter through a news release of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council.
In Taipei, a MAC official reaffirmed yesterday that it is the long-standing policy of the MAC to promote the charter flights for the holiday period, and that negotiations should take into account the existing Taiwan-Hong Kong aviation agreement.
MAC Vice Chairman Johnnason Liu (
Liu pointed out that the Taiwan Affairs Office said in October that following the model used to get negotiations on track to create the existing Taiwan-Hong Kong aviation agreement would be feasible, although the KMT delegation said that the insistence of this model would almost certainly stop the flights before they even got off the ground because the Taiwan-Hong Kong talks involved participation by government officials, something that Beijing will not accept.
TAA head Lo was also commissioned by Taiwan to head Taiwan's delegation during the talks to create the accord on Taiwan-Hong Kong flights in 2002, but the MAC and Civil Aeronautics Administration officials also came to the negotiating table to act as advisers for the TAA.
Weather conditions across Taiwan are expected to remain stable today, but cloudy to rainy skies are expected from tomorrow onward due to increasing moisture in the atmosphere, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). Daytime highs today are expected to hit 25-27°C in western Taiwan and 22-24°C in the eastern counties of Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung, data on the CWA website indicated. After sunset, temperatures could drop to 16-17°C in most parts of Taiwan. For tomorrow, precipitation is likely in northern Taiwan as a cloud system moves in from China. Daytime temperatures are expected to hover around 25°C, the CWA said. Starting Monday, areas
A Taiwanese software developer has created a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to help people use AI without exposing sensitive data, project head Huang Chung-hsiao (黃崇校) said yesterday. Huang, a 55-year-old coder leading a US-based team, said that concerns over data privacy and security in popular generative AIs such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek motivated him to develop a personal AI assistant named “Mei.” One of the biggest security flaws with cloud-based algorithms is that users are required to hand over personal information to access the service, giving developers the opportunity to mine user data, he said. For this reason, many government agencies and
The National Fire Agency on Thursday said a series of drills simulating a magnitude 8.5 earthquake would be held in September to enhance the government’s emergency response capabilities. Since earthquakes cannot be predicted, only by continuously promoting disaster prevention measures could Taiwan enhance its resilience to earthquakes, agency Director-General Hsiao Huan-chang (蕭煥章) said in a news release. The exercises would be held to mark annual National Disaster Prevention Day on Sept. 21, the aim of which is to test Taiwan’s preparedness and improve its earthquake resilience in case of a major temblor, Hsiao said. As part of those drills, an earthquake alert would
STRICTER ENFORCEMENT: Taipei authorities warned against drunk cycling after a sharp rise in riding under the influence, urging greater public awareness of its illegality Taipei authorities have issued a public warning urging people not to ride bicycles after consuming alcohol, following a sharp rise in riding under the influence (DUI) cases involving bicycles. Five hundred and seven people were charged with DUI last year while riding YouBikes, personal bicycles, or other self-propelled two-wheelers — a fourfold increase from the previous year, data released by the Taipei Police Department’s Traffic Division showed. Of these, 33 cases were considered severe enough to be prosecuted under “offenses against public safety,” the data showed. Under the Road Traffic Management and Penalty Act (道路交通管理處罰條例), bicycles — including YouBikes and other
RSS