SOCIETY
Pride theme announced
This year’s Taiwan LGBT Pride parade on Oct. 29 is to focus on celebrating sexual diversity, its organizers said. Now in its 20th year, the annual parade is aimed at encouraging people to embrace their sexual identity, the Taiwan Rainbow Civil Action Association said on Wednesday. Under the theme “An Unlimited Future,” the parade would also highlight the expectations of the LGBT community in Taiwan and celebrate the progress of LGBT rights in the country over the years, the association said. It said that in addition to this year’s pride parade in Taiwan, which is usually the biggest LGBT pride parade in East Asia, it would also hold a series of events to highlight the efforts made every day to be true to oneself. However, the association did not say whether the parade would be a physical event this year. It was held online last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
AGRICULTURE
Rain causes huge damage
Heavy rains in the second of half of last month caused approximately NT$15.14 million (US$515,176) in damage to crops across the country, the Council of Agriculture said. The hardest hit area was Pingtung County, where crop damage was estimated at NT$4.23 million, followed by Taoyuan with losses of NT$2.71 million, the council said, citing data from its Agriculture and Food Agency. Estimated losses were NT$2.65 million in Taichung, NT$2.01 million in Changhua County, NT$1.6 million in Chiayi County and NT$1.23 million in Yunlin County, the council said. The NT$15.14 million damage total was based on rain damage to approximately 405 hectares of crops, 82 hectares of which were not salvageable, it said. Taiwan recorded rainfall of 477.5mm last month.
EDUCATION
Taiwan to host contest
Taiwan has been selected to host the 2025 WorldSkills Asia competition, an international tournament promoting vocational skills education. WorldSkills Asia board member Lin San-quei (林三貴), a former deputy minister of labor, said he received notification on Tuesday that a majority of the group’s members had approved Taiwan’s application to host the event. The competition has been tentatively scheduled for November 2025, Lin said. WorldSkills Asia, a branch of WorldSkills International, held its first competition in Abu Dhabi in 2018. Over the past three years, it has held exhibition events online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second in-person competition is to take place in Kuala Lumpur next year, while the one in Taiwan would be the third. WorldSkills competitions cover a wide range of categories, including graphic design, vehicle painting, welding and robotics.
CULTURE
Japan awards novelist
Taiwanese novelist Chi Wei-jan (紀蔚然) was on Friday selected from a shortlist of five writers as the winner of a Japanese award for translated mystery fiction with his work Private Eyes (私家偵探). Chi, an emeritus professor who teaches drama and theater at National Taiwan University, said he was thrilled to win the 13th edition of the award, which asked readers, publishers, translators and critics to vote for their favorite translated mysteries published in Japan from Nov. 1, 2020 to Oct. 31 last year. Private Eyes, which focuses on a former professor who becomes a private detective, has enjoyed wide praise in Taiwan since it was first published in 2011. Chi, who published a sequel last year, said he is planning to write a third book in the series in about six months.
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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