Two MRT trains collided on Thursday inside the Wenshan-Neihu Line’s Neihu Depot, sparking renewed complaints from Taipei City councilors about the line’s system malfunctions and operational errors. The collision occurred at 8:33 a.m. as train No. 107 was entering the depot for maintenance. Train No. 101 was on the rail waiting for maintenance and was [...]

Workers’ groups on Thursday called a press conference to protest the omission of the right to strike from a UN covenant signed by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) earlier this year, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said the omission was unintentional and it had forwarded a correction to the Legislature earlier this week. The [...]

Taipei District Court on Thursday handed down a 40-day jail sentence to a man convicted of pelting with liquid-filled balloons and climbing on top of a car in which China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) was traveling during his visit to Taiwan last year. The ruling can be appealed. [...]

Taipei, Nov. 27 (CNA) Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung-bin reiterated Friday that city schools will only resume their subscriptions to the Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily once its publisher, Hong Kong’s Next Media Ltd., classifies news on its newly-inaugurated online news Web site. The city barred the subscriptions, Hau explained, because Apple Daily readers can easily [...]

Political election campaign headquarters in Taiwan are usually filled with large amounts of flowers and wreaths, as well as various items to pay tribute to the heavens. Many of them also have unique installation art or propitious items with the aim of seeking good fortune in the upcoming polls or leaving a good impression on [...]

Taipei, Nov. 26 (CNA) Human error might be the cause of the latest glitch, the fifth of its kind, on the Wen-Hu line of the Taipei MRT system, city authorities said Thursday. Tan Guo-guang, Taipei City’s deputy secretary-general, told a news conference later that day that an investigation had been launched to find the cause [...]

The Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA) intends to establish a presence in China in the form of semi-official or private organizations, CCA Minister Emile Sheng (盛治仁) said on Thursday. Sheng told reporters at a tea party that the cultural agency has set up offices in Europe and the U.S., but has yet to do so [...]

Environmentalists from Taiwan and China met on the outlying island of Kinmen on Thursday to discuss emergency preparedness for oil spills, as marine pollution emerges as a major issue following since the launch of direct shipping links across the Taiwan Strait. The environmental seminar, held at the National Kinmen Institute of Technology, discussed response strategies [...]

The government is planning to reduce the commodity tax on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)-powered hybrid cars to encourage consumers to buy the less-polluting vehicles, with the Executive Yuan passing a draft amendment on Thursday as the first step to eventually legalizing the tax cut. The draft, which calls for lowering the commodity tax on LPG [...]

Taipei, Nov. 27 (CNA) Seven percent of Taiwan’s population, or 1.6 million people, have been vaccinated against influenza A(H1N1) , also known as swine flu, as of Friday since the national immunization program began on Nov. 1, according to statistics from the Central Epidemics Command Center (CECC). The statistics also showed the percentage of immunized [...]