■ Legislature
Citizenship tests mandated
The legislature passed an amended bill yesterday requiring immigrants to pass a language test and a test of their knowledge of the law. Under the revised Nationality Law (國籍法), immigrants -- not including those from China -- must be tested on their Chinese language ability, knowledge of the law and the responsibilities of a citizen. "To become a citizen, a foreigner must have lived in Taiwan for three years and have basic Chinese language ability and the basic knowledge of a citizen's duties," according to the amended bill that will become effective after the Cabinet's approval. "The purpose of a language test is to help immigrants adapt to life in Taiwan and to make it easier for them to raise children," the bill states. The Ministry of the Interior will decide how to hold the tests, the fee for the tests and other issues, it said.
■ Labor
Taiwan top spot for Thais
Nearly 5 percent of the Thai workers in Taiwan, or about 5,000, are abused, harassed or deceived, Thai Ministry of Labor officials claimed yesterday, but the country remains a top recruiter of Thai nationals. According to the ministry's statistics, there are around 100,000 Thai workers in Taiwan now, making the country the largest foreign market for Thai workers, ahead of Japan and South Korea, which absorb some 70,000 and 30,000 Thais, respectively. Ministry officials attributed the phenomenon to the salaries paid by Taiwanese businesses, which at around NT$15,000 (about US$500) per month, are usually two or three times higher than the monthly average wage in Thailand. But they said that as many as 5 percent of Thai laborers, mostly women, are abused or harassed by their Taiwanese employers, or deceived by brokers in Thailand.
■ Education
Books donated to UCLA
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Los Angeles donated more than 400 books on behalf of the Ministry of Education to the Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Thursday. The donation included research collections from Academia Sinica, Taiwanese folk literature and books on Taiwan studies. The donation was made by TECO Los Angeles Director Wei Wu-lien (魏武煉) at a ceremony hosted by UCLA University Librarian Gary Strong. According to Amy Ching-fen Wu (吳慶芬), head of the East Asian Library, the donation is helpful in enhancing the library's research resources on Chinese and Taiwanese folk cultures and local traditions. Chang Shui-chin (張水金), chief of the cultural section at the TECO, said the office will contact other university libraries in the southwest US to promote the book donation program to help enhance understanding of Taiwanese culture by US university students, faculty members and researchers.
■ Science
Satellite opens for business
FORMOSAT-2 started its business operations this month, a year after its California launch, a National Space Organization (NSPO) official said yesterday. FORMOSAT-2 is orbiting 891km above the Earth to conduct remote sensing and observation of upper atmosphere lightning. Liu Yung-nien (劉永年), head of NSPO business development, said that FORMOSAT-2 began to sell images this month. The satellite is expected to earn NT$80 million (US$2.55 million) over the next six months, while its operational revenues could hit NT$200 million next year, Liu said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
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POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the