WEATHER
Cold front to hit Taiwan
The mercury is expected to drop nationwide from today as a cold front accompanied by seasonal winds is to pass over Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. The air movement may bring a cool and wet weather pattern across the nation with the effects most likely to be felt in the northern and northeastern regions, it said. The trend might continue for a week, the bureau said, with daily temperatures forecast to range between 22°C and 30°C in northern Taiwan, between 24°C and 31°C in central Taiwan, and between 25°C and 31°C in southern Taiwan. Meanwhile, more rain is expected starting next Friday caused by the outer rim of an approaching tropical storm, the bureau said. As of 8am yesterday, Tropical Strom Jelawat was centered 1,470km southeast of the southernmost tip of Taiwan, moving slowly in a westerly direction.
SOCIETY
Poverty levels increase
There were 137,000 low-income households in the country as of the end of June, an increase of 20.2 percent from the same period last year, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The number of low-income individuals for the same period stood at 338,000 people, up 22.4 percent, and increased to 1.5 percent of the total population as a result of the easing of regulations governing public assistance introduced last year, the ministry said. The implementation of an amendment to the Social Assistance Act (社會救助法) in July last year allowed 71,000 households or 228,000 individuals, considered to be “lower middle income” earners to receive government subsidies as of this June. Currently, 2.6 percent of families in Taiwan and 2.4 percent of the total population are receiving help from the government, the ministry said.
EDUCATION
Global role for academics
Five members of Academia Sinica, the nation’s top academic research institute, have been elected to the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), headquartered in Italy, the institute said in a statement on Friday. Chang Tzu-ching (張慈錦), an assistant research fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, was elected a 2012 TWAS Young Affiliate — an honor awarded annually to exceptional scientists aged under 40. The five academicians elected as TWAS fellows were Wang Kuan (王寬), director of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Chemistry; Wang Lu-hai (王陸海), acting president and distinguished investigator of the National Health Research Institutes’ Division of Molecular and Genomic Medicine; Liang Kung-yee (梁賡義), president of National Yang-Ming University; Chu Shih-i (朱時宜), director of the Kansas Center for Advanced Scientific Computing and Hu Chenming (胡正明), a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley.
AVIATION
Airline looks for new recruits
Over 4,000 people were interviewed yesterday in the first stage of a selection process to hire 126 flight attendants for China Airlines (CAL), the nation’s largest carrier. CAL’s recruitment drive, its second this year, is being conducted in two stages as part of its business expansion plan. The airline said it hopes to find flight attendants with excellent communication skills. An independent panel of representatives from the government, academic and industrial sectors would be interviewing more than 4,000 applicants over the weekend, CAL said.
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
RSS