SOCIETY
NT$19 snack wins millions
A NT$19 (US$0.65) receipt for a snack food product is one of the lucky winners of a NT$10 million special prize in the latest uniform invoice lottery, the 7-Eleven convenience store chain said yesterday. The Ministry of Finance on Sunday announced the winning numbers for the January-February uniform invoice lottery. One customer won the special prize after purchasing a NT$19 snack at a 7-Eleven outlet in Banciao District (板橋), New Taipei City, the chain said in a statement. The winning number for the special prize is 21735266. Every uniform invoice with that number receives a special prize of NT$10 million. Supermarket chain Pxmart and convenience store chain Family Mart said they had also each issued an invoice that won a NT$10 million special prize.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Tsai meets foreign official
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday met Guatemalan Minister of Foreign Affairs Sandra Jovel and said she hopes that bilateral exchanges could deepen the friendship between the two nations. Tsai commended Jovel, who assumed her post in August last year, for her contributions to enhance relations between the two nations, and said she hopes the minister would continue her support for Taiwan. Tsai said the two nations have been friends for 85 years and cooperate closely on healthcare, agricultural techniques and technology, and infrastructure development. Jovel is leading a five-member delegation to Taiwan until tomorrow. Also yesterday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) conferred a medal on behalf of the government on his Guatemalan counterpart in recognition of her support for Taiwan in the international arena, a statement issued by the ministry said.
POLITICS
Ma gets travel permit
The Presidential Office has approved an application by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to travel to the US next month, office spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said on Sunday. Ma intends to visit the US from April 9 to 13, during which he is to give a speech at Stanford University, Lin said, adding that Ma’s application was reviewed based on the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法) and regulations governing restrictions by the Presidential Office on overseas travel by those involved in national secrets. It would be the fourth time Ma is to travel abroad since he stepped down in May 2016 after completing his second term in office. Ma flew to Malaysia in November 2016, and in February last year visited New York, Boston and Washington at the invitation of several US think tanks and academic organizations.
CRIME
Man arrested for extortion
Police on Sunday arrested a man in Taichung for allegedly attempting to extort money from the Chiayi City police earlier in the day with a bomb threat. The man, identified only by his surname, Wang, telephoned the bureau at about 2pm claiming he had placed a bomb in a women’s bathroom at the Chiayi high-speed railway station. Chiayi police said Wang demanded that the bureau pay him NT$1 million or he would detonate the bomb. After tracing the call to a hotel in Taichung, Chiayi police went to Taichung and contacted the local police. They arrested the 39-year-old at the hotel and took him back to Chiayi. They also checked to see if there was a bomb in one of the railway station’s restrooms, but did not find anything suspicious.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
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