EARTHQUAKES
Taitung hit by quake
A magnitude 4.7 earthquake yesterday struck Taitung County, the Central Weather Bureau said, adding that no damage or injuries were reported. The earthquake was centered 60.3km southwest of Taitung County Hall and occurred at a depth of 39.2km, the bureau’s Seismology Center said. Its highest intensity, which gauges its actual effect, was recorded in parts of Pingtung County, where it measured 3 on the nation’s seven-tier intensity scale, the bureau said. The quake also had an intensity of 2 in Taitung and Kaohsiung, and 1 in Tainan, as well as Chiayi and Yunlin counties, it added.
CRIME
Fraud ring suspects arrested
Authorities in Taiwan and Indonesia worked together to break up an international fraud operation by arresting 24 suspects, including four Taiwanese, the Indonesian National Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) said on Tuesday. Alleged members of the ring, which included four Taiwanese and 20 Chinese, were arrested in Jakarta on suspicion of conducting Internet telecommunications fraud and money laundering starting last year, Bareskrim said in a statement. With the help of Taiwanese police, members of the fraud ring were found to have been operating in five locations in Jakarta, it said. Indonesian police conducted raids and confiscated evidence, including mobile phones and tablets. The ring allegedly obtained hundreds of millions of rupiah through illicit means, Bareskrim said. There were an estimated 350 victims, all of whom were Chinese, it said.
TRAVEL
Taiwan on top workation list
Taiwan is the 14th best destination for working vacations (workations) around the world and third in the Asia-Pacific region, a list compiled by Sydney-based accommodation metasearch site HotelsCombined showed. HotelsCombined’s workation index ranked 111 nations and regions as working vacation destinations using 22 factors that were divided into six categories: health and safety conditions, local prices, social opportunities, remote working conditions and weather. Taiwan placed 14th worldwide with a score of 80 out of 100 points, and ranked third-best in the Asia-Pacific region after Japan and Sri Lanka. Taiwan scored highly in terms of commodity prices, health and safety, HotelsCombined said. The world’s top 10 countries were Portugal, Spain, Romania, Mauritius, Japan, Malta, Costa Rica, Panama, the Czech Republic and Germany, in that order.
SOCIETY
Teacher returns to US
The last member of a group of foreign volunteers who taught English in Kinmen County as part of the “English Schweitzers” social welfare program returned home to the US yesterday. The program, which was funded by the King Car Cultural & Educational Foundation, ended in 2013. However, some of the volunteers stayed on as teachers after acquiring teaching qualifications, the Kinmen Department of Education said. In an interview with local Chinese-language media, Ohioan Andrew Steward said he and his family had planned to stay for at least another four years, but after returning to the US for a visit last summer and seeing how well his daughter has adapted to life there with less COVID-19 restrictions, they decided to move back to the US ahead of schedule. Steward said he was grateful to be accepted by Kinmen residents and loved the county’s natural beauty. Steward came to Taiwan in 2004, and met and later married a fellow Ohioan while in Kinmen.
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
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
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
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