■ TRANSPORTATION
Free bus trial to begin
Starting tomorrow, the Kao-hsiung City Government will begin offering free bus rides on Thursdays on a trial basis, the city government said yesterday. The city’s Transportation Bureau issued a press release saying that bus rides on the city’s 82 bus routes would be free of charge every Thursday for three months. It said the city hopes to encourage more residents to use public transportation. The city government will also offer passengers free rides on six of the city’s holiday sightseeing bus routes, including one along the city’s coast line, one to the city’s Cijin District (旗津) and one to the city’s old neighborhood in Yencheng District (鹽埕). The buses will operate every Saturday and Sunday, the bureau said. The bureau said that although both free ride schemes are expected to increase the city government’s expenditure by NT$30 million (US$988,000), the plans are expected to help reduce carbon dioxide emission by 170 tonnes.
■ POLITICS
Exam yuan may face cuts
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) yesterday urged the Presidential Office to support his proposal to halve the size of the Examination Yuan. Tsai highlighted the financial benefits to the public if the Examination Yuan were downsized from 21 people to 9 people. He said the annual salary of each member of the Examination Yuan is about NT$5 million. Halving the government branch would help the government save about NT$50 million every year, he said. Given the Presidential Office’s promotion of government frugality, the Examination Yuan should also be halved “like the Legislative Yuan was,” he said. Tsai said legislators across party lines had reached a consensus regarding the proposal, but the legislature had yet to schedule the bill for a preliminary review because of opposition from the Presidential Office.
■ DIPLOMACY
Ma meets Holy See officials
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) met the Holy See’s new charge d’affaires in Taiwan, Monsignor Paul Fitzpatrick Russell, and his predecessor, Monsignor Ambrose Madtha, at the Presidential Office yesterday. During the meeting, Ma said that relations between Taiwan and the Vatican have been harmonious, adding that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) visited the Holy See in May 2005 to attend the late Pope John Paul II’s funeral. Fitzpatrick Russell was named the Vatican’s new diplomatic representative to Taiwan early last month, after Madtha was named Apostolic Nuncio to Ivory Coast in West Africa. Ma said that relations between Taiwan and the Vatican were very close during Ambrose’s five-plus years as the Holy See’s representative, adding that he would be missed by everyone in Taiwan. The president also welcomed the new representative. The Vatican is the only state in Europe that diplomatically recognizes Taiwan.
■ HEALTH
Boy dies of enterovirus
A two-year-old boy in Taichung County has died of serious enterovirus infection, making him the country’s fifth victim of the disease so far this year, the Department of Health (DOH) reported yesterday. The DOH’s Centers for Disease Control was expected to hold a news conference later yesterday to announce whether an enterovirus outbreak alert would be issued with an increased response level. Enterovirus is a virus that enters the body through the gastrointestinal tract, where it thrives.
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