■DIPLOMACY
Burghardt concludes visit
American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairman Raymond Burghardt returned to the US yesterday, concluding his four-day visit to Taipei to brief Taiwanese officials and opposition leaders on US President Barack Obama’s recent visit to China. Burghardt arrived in Taiwan on Sunday, only days after a joint statement was issued by Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Beijing. The trip was aimed at clearing the air on Taiwan’s place in US-China-Taiwan relations and explaining the US government’s views on a number of other issues, including its economic agenda, US arms sales to Taiwan and the controversy surrounding Taiwan’s relaxation of its regulations on US beef imports.
■CULTURE
Foundation set to sign MOU
The Memorial Foundation of 228 and Taipei City Government are set to sign a memorandum of understanding today to cooperate on projects with the city’s 228 Memorial Museum. Foundation chief executive officer Liao Chi-pin (廖繼斌) said the foundation plans to open its national 228 memorial museum in 2011. The museum will be located on Nanhai Road where the American Institute in Taiwan’s culture and information section used to stand. Since the city’s 228 Memorial Museum was established in 1997, Liao said they have more display items than the national 228 museum, but the national museum’s advantage is that it has more comprehensive archives than the municipal one. “Basically, we want the exhibitions held by the two museums not to repeat or overlap with each other,” he said. “We also want to share our resources ... families of victims do not care whether the museum is national or municipal.”
■CRIME
Baggage handlers nabbed
Three baggage handlers at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport were arrested for stealing cash and other valuables from passengers’ luggage, airport police said yesterday. “Three baggage handlers have been detained for stealing a wallet containing ¥20,000 (US$400) from a Japanese passenger’s checked-in luggage. We are investigating if more baggage handlers are involved,” airport police told reporters. The Japanese man flew from Taiwan to Okinawa on Nov. 18. When he retrieved his luggage upon arrival, he saw that it had been opened and the wallet was missing, so he asked Okinawa officials to inform Taiwanese authorities. During questioning on Tuesday, three baggage handlers confessed to stealing from luggage for about two years, a Taoyuan airport police officer who requested anonymity said. “They stole valuables while loading luggage inside the airplane’s cargo hold, as there is no security camera there,” he said.
■CULTURE
Flower exhibition to open
The Shihlin Official Residence Chrysanthemum Exhibition opens on Saturday and will feature about 100 kinds of chrysanthemum, including 22 kinds being shown at the annual exhibition for the first time, Taipei City’s Parks and Street Lights Office said. The exhibition will also feature a number of special activities on weekends including chrysanthemum painting shows, saxophone performances and hand puppet shows. To mark next year’s Taipei International Flora Expo , the exhibition will feature nine zones displaying 55,000 pots of chrysanthemum, the office said. The exhibition is open from 8am to 7pm and runs until Dec. 13. For more information visit www.2009chshow.com.tw.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening 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) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
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