CRIME
Police stop attacker
Police yesterday fired 13 shots at a man who stormed into Tainan’s Jhaigang Police Station with two kitchen knives to stop him from attacking police officers at the station. Five shots hit the man’s legs and one hit his abdomen, and he was rushed to a nearby hospital, police said, adding that he was not in a life-threatening situation. It was not immediately clear if any police officers were injured in the incident.
EMPLOYMENT
Ministry to raise labor cap
The Ministry of Labor is to ease the maximum limit for foreign workers in the farming sector from 2,400 to 6,000 to alleviate a labor shortage, an official said on Thursday. At the request of the Council of Agriculture (COA), the quota for the employment of migrant workers in the agricultural sector was recently reviewed by the ministry’s Cross-Border Workforce Affairs Center, which suggested an increase, said Paul Su (蘇裕國), who heads the center. While the cap will be raised, regulations governing types of employment will remain, Su said. It means that migrant farm workers can be employed in areas including animal husbandry and fish farming, but they will be barred from jobs such as milking cows and tending orchids, edible mushrooms and vegetables, he said. The center also recommended that the COA ensure that migrant farm workers do not abandon their jobs, given a higher incidence of farm workers absconding.
EDUCATION
7,000 foreign students arrive
Almost 7,000 international students have arrived in the nation since February under a program to help them pursue their education here amid border controls implemented in the wake of COVID-19 outbreaks. According to the Ministry of Education, a total of 6,916 university or lower-level international students have been granted visas since July 19, of which 2,995 were in Taiwan as of Wednesday. Meanwhile, of the 5,790 international students enrolled in local non-degree programs, 3,913 had arrived between Feb. 13 and Wednesday, the data showed. The numbers are bound to increase as more students are set to arrive in the run-up to the start of the semester. Under Taiwan’s quarantine rules, they will have to go into isolation in the first three days following their arrival in Taiwan and self-monitor their health for another four days, after which they will be allowed access to their school. To save employees at institutions in southern Taiwan from having to make the trip to Taipei, the ministry plans to meet with schools in the south to discuss the possibility of using Kaohsiung International Airport to assist international students with their entry, it said.
SCANDAL: There are still discussions over whether a ban from being coaches, referees or agents should be imposed on the players, the association said The Chinese Taipei Basketball Association (CTBA), Taiwan’s basketball governing body, on Tuesday said that it has handed lifetime bans to 10 players accused of game-fixing and breaches of betting rules. In a statement on Tuesday, the CTBA said it has revoked the registration of nine former players from the semi-professional Super Basketball League’s (SBL) Yulon Lexgen Dinos and one from the Taiwan Beer Leopards of the professional T1 League. The nine former Dinos players are Ko Min-hao (柯旻豪), Chiu Chung-po (邱忠博), Chen Pin-chuan (陳品銓), Huang Hsuan-min (黃鉉閔), Wu Yu-jen (吳祐任), Chou Wei-chen (周暐宸), Yen Wen-tso (顏聞佐), Lee Chi-en (李其恩), and Senegalese center
It took director Chong Keat Aun (張吉安) nearly a decade to complete Snow in Midsummer (五月雪), a deft chronicle of Malaysia’s May 13 incident told through one woman’s search for her brother and father. Although only his second feature, it led the field at yesterday’s Golden Horse Awards with nine nominations. Chong said it had been a struggle to get people to share their memories of the intercommunal violence following the 1969 national election, known among the country’s ethnic Chinese community as “513.” “My father, for example, would shut the conversation down if my mother or grandma even mentioned the topic,” Chong said
A new poll of Taiwanese voters found the top opposition candidate for president jumping past the ruling party’s hopeful into the lead position ahead of January’s election — the latest twist in a drama-filled race. Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) had an approval rating of 31.9 percent versus 29.2 percent for the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential candidate Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the poll released yesterday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation showed. The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), ranked third with 23.6 percent, according to the survey conducted
NOT TOO LATE: Hou urged Ko to ‘think things over,’ adding that there were still 48 hours to change his mind, as the TPP picked up registration forms in Taipei Focusing on polling disputes between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) is not conducive toward collaboration, the campaign office manager of the TPP’s presidential candidate, Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), said yesterday. Vivian Huang’s (黃珊珊) comments came after New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), the KMT’s presidential candidate, on Tuesday called for both sides to return to the table for further talks about forming a joint ticket for the election on Jan. 13. Hou had suggested that the parties each pick two experts to re-evaluate the polling results to determine who was favored to lead the ticket, and
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