■ EARTHQUAKES
Temblors rattle Taiwan
Two earthquakes, measuring 5.5 and 4.6 on the Richter scale, rattled Taiwan before dawn yesterday, but there were no reports of casualties or damage, officials said. The epicenter of the stronger earthquake, which struck at 5:05am was about 27km east of Ilan at a depth of 65km, the Central Weather Bureau said in a statement. It could be felt in Taipei. The second quake hit at 6:09am about 5km southeast of Taitung at a depth of 26km, the weather bureau said.
■ CRIME
Man jailed in Cambodia
A Taiwanese man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Cambodia after being convicted of trying to smuggle heroin out of the country, court officials said yesterday. Wang Tien-su, 50, was arrested in February with 200g of heroin hidden in condoms in his shoes as he tried to pass through Phnom Penh International Airport, judge Iv Kim Sry said. He was found guilty on Tuesday and was fined US$12,500, the judge said. At least half a dozen Taiwanese, including a 90-year-old man, have been detained trying to smuggle heroin through the airport in the past year. Although drug arrests have increased, Cambodia is becoming an increasingly popular trafficking point for methamphetamines and heroin, particularly since Thailand toughened its stance on illegal drugs in 2002.
■ ACCIDENTS
Search for sailors continues
Navy vessels and helicopters continued the search yesterday for 26 sailors missing after a Panama-registered cargo ship sank off the northeastern coast. No additional survivors were found but two unidentified bodies were discovered, an official said. The 16,000-tonne Mezzanine, loaded with iron ore, capsized in rough seas on Tuesday. The 28-year-old vessel departed an Indonesian port last Saturday for the Chinese port of Tianjin. Only one person has been rescued, Herry Marthen Bakarbessy, an Indonesian sailor, who was pulled out of the water by the Coast Guard on Wednesday after floating at sea for about 20 hours, he said. "There were no traces of other missing sailors, but we will continue the rescue effort, with navy vessels searching in the high seas and patrol boats near shore," a Coast Guard official said.
■ POLITICS
Women campaign for DPP
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters in Taichung City yesterday formed a women's campaign team that will focus on drumming up support for the party ahead of the presidential election. Led by Deputy Presidential Office Secretary-General Lin Chia-lung's (林佳龍) wife, Liao Wan-ju (廖婉如), the team began its campaigning yesterday. Urging women to unite on political issues and speak up for their rights, Liao said women needed to take the March election seriously and turn out in big numbers. Yu Fang-chih (游芳枝), wife of DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), said the DPP attached great importance to women's rights and would continue to fight for gender equality if re-elected to the Presidential Office. Yu said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) recently announced measures for women's rights were nothing new. Ma's policies on women's issues are only a mirror of what the government has been fighting for over the last seven years, Yu 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
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