■ Crime
Police seize fake drug haul
A big haul of counterfeit medicine, including the prized weight-loss drug Reductil, intended for online sale in Taiwan, has been seized, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) announced yesterday. CIB investigators raided the homes of two men, surnamed Wu and Chen, in Taichung and seized more than 5,000 tablets of counterfeit medicine. The haul included l2,000 tablets of the anti-obesity medicine Reductil (Sibutramine), 1,500 tablets of Viagra, 280 tablets of Cialis -- another drug for the treatment of erectile dysfunction -- and 1,600 other unknown pills. The investigators learned that the fake pills were manufactured in China and smuggled into Taiwan by people returning from China, intended for sale to Taiwanese customers via online transactions, CIB officials said.
■ Labor
Disabled to get more jobs
The Ministry of the Interior will draft revisions to the law that require more job openings for mentally or physically challenged individuals, Minister of the Interior Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) said. Under the terms of the Disabled People Protection Law (身心障礙者保護法), public agencies with a staff of more than 50 must have at least 2 percent of their staff include people with physical or mental disabilities. Meanwhile, private enterprises with a staff of more than 100 must ensure that at least 1 percent of their staffers are people with disabilities. As of the end of September, private and public agencies had employed a total of 45,400 disabled staffers, exceeding the mandatory minimum of 33,955. Su said the ministry plans to raise the disabled hiring ratio for public agencies to 3 percent.
■ Education
Taiwan, Ohio ink agreement
The Ministry of Education has signed a memorandum of cooperation with the US state of Ohio under which the state government will help recruit teachers to teach English in Taiwanese elementary schools, Taiwan officials said on Thursday. The Ohio government will also recruit Taiwanese teachers to teach Chinese in the state next year, according to Hsu Hui-wen (徐會文), chief of the cultural affairs division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago. Ohio is the second US state after Indiana to establish an educational cooperation agreement with Taiwan. Hsu said that according to the terms of the memorandum signed on Nov. 29, Ohio's Department of Education will help post a notice detailing Taiwan's plan to recruit teachers, with 15 openings available in the initial stage.
■ Sports
Kaohsiung in for 2011 games
A screening team of the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports has selected Kaohsiung to represent the nation in the country's bid to host the 2011 World University Games. Council officials said that one of the government's major policies is to bid to host international athletic meets, noting that Taipei has been awarded the right to host the 2009 Deaflympic Games for athletes with hearing impairments, and that Kaohsiung has already been awarded the right to host the 2009 World Games. In the near future, they have set the goal of bidding to host the World University Games with the aim of accumulating more experience in sponsoring international events to achieve the eventual goals of bidding to host the 2018 Asian Games and the 2020 Olympic Games.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened 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), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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