DIPLOMACY
You Si-kun to travel to US
Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫?) is to travel to the US tomorrow to speak at a summit on religious freedom and attend the US National Prayer Breakfast. A person with knowledge of the speaker’s itinerary said he would deliver a speech on Wednesday at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington. He is also to attend Thursday’s prayer breakfast — an annual gathering of political and religious leaders in Washington. Early on Friday he would fly back from New York, the source said on condition of anonymity. He was originally supposed to stay in the US for nine days, but the speaker’s schedule was condensed, as he is to attend the swearing in of new Cabinet members and the legislature’s review of a proposal to distribute last year’s surplus tax revenue to the public. The Legislative Yuan’s new session is to begin on Wednesday.
CRIME
Bullets found in man’s bag
An American transiting at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport en route to the Philippines was arrested on Thursday after customs officials found 50 undeclared .22 caliber bullets in his checked baggage. Police said an X-ray scanner detected the bullets. The suspect, 75, had been referred to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office, as he might have contravened the Controlling Guns, Ammunition and Knives Act (槍砲彈藥刀械管制條例), they said. The man, who was traveling from San Francisco to Cebu to visit his son, said he unintentionally left the bullets in his backpack after a hunting trip. The Aviation Police Bureau said prosecutors would investigate the case, but they were unlikely to press charges if the man’s story turns out to be true.
CULTURE
Latern fest to open in Taipei
The Taiwan Lantern Festival is to be held at four sites in Taipei from Sunday to Feb. 19. The Taipei City Government, which jointly organizes the event with the Tourism Bureau, said shuttle bus services would connect the four sites: Xinyi District (信義), Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Taipei City Hall plaza. Bus tickets would cost NT$5 per journey, it said. The buses would connect Taipei’s MRT metropolitan railway system’s Red Line to the Blue and Green lines. Extra MRT services would be offered on the Red and Blue lines from Wednesday, as roadside parking would not be allowed near the venues, it said. The hourly rate at public parking lots near the venues would be increased to NT$60, the city government said.
CULTURE
Ting Chiang dies aged 86
Award winning TV and movie actor Ting Chiang (丁強) died on Friday at the age of 86. Ting had been recovering at home from a minor stroke, his agent said. However, he fell at home before the Lunar New Year holiday and was admitted to hospital, where his condition deteriorated quickly, the agent said, adding that Ting’s widow, veteran actress Li Hsuan (李璇), consented to a do-not-resuscitate order. As actors, Ting and Li last shared the screen in 2021 in the award-winning television drama Tears on Fire (火神的眼淚), in which they played husband and wife. Ting was nominated for the Golden Bell Award for Best Leading Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film in 2001, 2007 and 2010, winning the prize in 2001 for the miniseries Remember, Forget (記住忘了).
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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