EMPLOYMENT
Thousands seek airline jobs
Thousands of jobseekers flocked to the recruitment sites of budget airline V Air and Singapore Airlines yesterday to pursue a limited number of cabin-crew positions. Owned by Taiwan-based TransAsia Airways Corp, V Air had nearly 2,000 applicants for 80 cabin-crew jobs with starting monthly salaries of NT$60,000. Most of the applicants were from the hospitality industry, TransAsia said. The ratio of female to male applicants was 8:2 compared with a previous ratio of 9:1, it said. TransAsia said it would reveal the new airline’s corporate logo and its management team next week. Meanwhile, 1,200 applicants are competing for up to 50 cabin-crew positions at Singapore Airlines, which offers a starting salary of NT$80,000.
CRIME
Indian office in bomb threat
Taiwan’s representative to India confirmed on Thursday that his office had received a letter threatening “dirty bomb attacks” on the New Delhi office. James Tien (田中光), head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India, said the New Delhi center recently received a threatening letter written in English addressed to the “Taiwan embassy.” Abusive words were used in the letter, but no demands were made, said the representative, who suspected it was an act of discontent. His office contacted the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and police after receiving the letter. Security measures have since been enhanced and Tien thanked the Indian government for promising to increase patrols near the center. He also thanked Indian authorities for their swift response. The Times of India reported in its Thursday edition that a bomb squad inspected the center a day earlier.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift