■ Society
Town's couples stay together
The tiny, serene Hakka rural township of Hengshan in Hsinchu County seems to have Cupid's blessing, as 67 couples living there have celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary, photographer Chen Yu-shu (陳玉書) said yesterday. Compared with Hsinchu City, where there are only 20-odd couples out of a population of 380,000 who have been married for over 60 years, Hengshan boasts 67 such couples out of a population of 14,000, Chen said. Chen has spent six months in rural areas around Hsinchu as an artist-in-residence. The Hakka seniors are intriguing and they make superb models, Chen said. Chen has been photographing around the rural areas for the Hsinchu Railway Art Village and he found the Hengshan seniors the most adorable, particularly with vintage railway systems as backgrounds.
■ Travel
Plane's door torn off at CKS
The side door of a United Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft was torn off yesterday when it suddenly moved away from a passenger gantry at Taiwan's CKS International Airport, officials said. None of the 143 passengers and 11 crew on the plane that was bound for Nagoya, Japan, were injured. "It was probably a communication problem," an airport official said. An inquiry was launched by the Aviation Safety Council into the cause of the incident, the second one in less than a week. Last Thursday a piece of wing came loose from a Fokker passenger plane flying on a domestic route, breaking two of its windows.
■ Activism
Group denies allegations
An official of the government-funded Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) denied over the weekend a report that the foundation has financed a journal launched by Chinese democracy activists overseas in exchange for their support for Taiwan independence. According to the report published by a Beijing-based newspaper on Friday, the Beijing Spring monthly receives an annual US$50,000 subsidy from the foundation under a contract established between the two sides. The report claimed that under this arrangement, members of the journal's editorial committee are assigned by the National Security Bureau, and any personnel adjustments require the bureau's approval. Chou Yi-cheng (周奕成), an official with the TFD, dismissed the report. Chou said that the foundation did subsidize Beijing Spring last year, but that it has not done so this year.
■ Food Safety
Firms recall rice dumplings
The food producer Hsin Tung Yang is among four companies that has been required to withdraw rice dumplings intended for the Dragon Boat Festival from stores after a random sampling showed that its BBQ red yeast rice dumplings contained excessive quantities of the preservative benzoic acid. A total of 84 samples were taken by the Taipei City Government's Department of Health on May 17, with four containing excessive quantities of preservative and eight failing to meet hygiene standards. If the excess quantities of preservative are found to be due to actions of the manufacturer, a fine of between NT$30,000 and NT$150,000 may be levied. Rice dumplings from other up-market companies such as the Kee-Wah Bakery and the hypermarket Geant were found to have excessive quantities of bacillus coli, and have also been recalled.
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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