CHARITY
Millions given to Japan
People in Taiwan donated more than NT$540 million (US$17.2 million) for relief aid and post-disaster reconstruction work in western Japan in the wake of the Noto earthquake on Jan. 1, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said yesterday, three days after a donation program ended. From Jan. 5 to Friday, NT$541,589,468 in 134,368 donations poured into the designated bank account the ministry set up after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake rocked the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture on the first day of this year, the ministry’s Department of Social Assistance and Social Work said. The donation program concluded at 11:59pm on Friday and members of the public would no longer be able to make donations to the account, the ministry added. The donated funds would be transferred to Japan via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the details of the donors would be made public on the health ministry’s Web site.
An NHK report on Monday said that local authorities in Japan have confirmed at least 232 deaths from the disaster, with more than 15,000 people still housed in shelters in Ishikawa Prefecture. As of 2pm on Sunday, the earthquake had caused damage to more than 34,000 houses and buildings, with 49,000 households still without any water supply, NHK said.
ENVIRONMENT
Factory fined for dead fish
The Taoyuan city government said on Sunday that it is to issue a fine after a hydrochloric acid leak at the shuttered Chemours chemical plant in the city’s Guanyin District (觀音) caused mass fish deaths in a public estuary. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection said in a statement that the case was first brought to light on Friday when residents near Guanyin District reported large numbers of dead fish by the estuary at one end of the Daku River (大堀溪). After conducting an investigation, the department said it realized the fish were killed by hydrochloric acid that had leaked from a cracked pipe at the plant. The failure of those responsible for managing the facility to deal with the leak within three hours constituted a violation of the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法), which carries a maximum fine of NT$6 million, the department said.
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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