CULTURE
CAL float wins trophy
China Airlines (CAL) on Monday won the International Trophy at the Rose Parade in California for the seventh straight year, with its entry of a fire-breathing dragon float. The float was designed in keeping with the parade’s theme of “Just Imagine” and in celebration of the Year of the Dragon on the lunar calendar. Titled “Spirit of Prosperity and Harmony,” the float was dedicated to wishing Taiwan and its people an auspicious, prosperous and harmonious year, said Chang Feng-ping (張鳳炳), director of the airline’s Los Angeles branch. The airline began participating in the parade in 1987. Taiwan was also featured on another float, called “Donate Life,” which displayed the photos of 72 organs.
WEATHER
Meteor shower to be hidden
The first meteor shower of the year is unlikely to be visible, thanks to poor weather expected across Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. The Quadrantid meteor shower, one of the year’s most prolific, will likely be obscured by heavy clouds at its peak in the early hours of today, the bureau said. The meteor shower will reach its maximum at 7:20am, the bureau said. The Quadrantid meteor shower was discovered in 1825 by Italian astronomers. By 1938, it was confirmed to be one of the three strongest annual showers visible from Earth, along with the Perseids and Geminids.
TRANSPORT
UA flight turns around
A United Airlines (UA) plane carrying 270 passengers was forced to make an emergency landing at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday due to a mechanical problem. The pilots of the Boeing 777 turned the aircraft around about an hour into the flight after the nose wheel door of the landing gear failed to close. The plane made an emergency landing close to midday. All passengers and crew were safe upon landing, the airline said. The flight took off from Taoyuan airport at about 10:30am, bound for San Francisco and Houston, Texas, with a stopover in Tokyo. The passengers were later transferred to other flights.
CULTURE
Jay Chou tops song list
Pop idol Jay Chou’s (周杰倫) new song, titled Sailors Afraid of Water (水手怕水) topped the list of the 100 most popular songs of last year in Taiwan, making Chou a four-time winner of the annual title, according to the results of an online survey released on Monday. South Korean boy band Super Junior’s Mr Simple took second place, while the The Boys by the nine-member all-female South Korean band Girls’ Generation ranked third among the 300 Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese, South Korean and Western songs listed in the survey. In previous years, the survey included more Japanese songs than South Korean ones. This time around, 16 South Korean songs made the list compared with nine Japanese songs. The online survey was conducted by the radio station Hit FM from Dec. 1 to Dec. 18. Nearly 4 million votes were cast during the period.
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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