SOCIETY
Invoice prizes increased
The National Taxation Bureau yesterday announced that from last month to June, an additional 700,000 sets of cloud-based invoice prizes, each worth NT$500 (US$16), are to be issued to encourage people to store their cloud-based invoices using mobile barcodes or other digital platforms when making purchases. For each two-month period in the first half of the year, one special prize, one grand prize and three prizes each for first to sixth place would be drawn. The cloud-based invoice exclusive prizes include 30 prizes of NT$1 million, 16,000 prizes of NT$2,000, 100,000 prizes of NT$800, and 3.85 million prizes of NT$500, the bureau said, adding that in total, 3,966,030 sets of cloud-based invoice exclusive prizes would be issued in the six-month period.
Photo: Taipei Times
TRANSPORTATION
Airport holiday traffic up
Passenger traffic at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport around the Lunar New Year holiday from Feb. 13 to Monday totaled about 1.7 million people, up about 5.8 percent from the same period last year, the airport’s operator said yesterday. During the 11-day period, daily passenger throughput averaged about 155,000 people, with passenger volumes exceeding 160,000 four times, Taoyuan International Airport Corp said in a statement. Passenger traffic hit a single-day peak of about 169,000 during the period, surpassing the previous single-day record for the Lunar New Year holiday of 166,000 in 2019, it said.
LITERATURE
Yang on Booker longlist
Yang Shuang-zi’s (楊?子) Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄) has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize for translated fiction, the award’s organizers announced on Tuesday. Judges described the novel, which tells the story of a same-sex romance between a Japanese author and her local interpreter in 1930s Taiwan, as “a delicious romance and an incisive postcolonial novel.” Following in the footsteps of Wu Ming-yi (吳明益), who was longlisted in 2018 for his novel The Stolen Bicycle (單車失竊記), Yang said she believes more Taiwanese novelists would see their names appear on the prize’s lists in the future. Lin King (金翎), the English translator of Taiwan Travelogue, said she is honored that the English edition, published more than a year ago, continues to resonate with readers worldwide.
BUSINESS
Coupang to pay NT$200m
South Korean e-commerce company Coupang Inc on Tuesday announced it would offer more than NT$200 million in total compensation to Taiwanese customers after a data breach in November last year that could have impacted up to 200,000 people. From March 8, customers could receive a NT$1,000 company gift voucher, it said. Customers can check their eligibility via the Coupang app, a designated Web site or by calling customer service, it added. The major breach occurred after a former employee at Coupang obtained customers’ personal information from the company system. Cybersecurity firm Mandiant said it found the former employee had access to personal data from 200,000 Taiwanese customers, including full names, e-mails, phone numbers and delivery addresses. They could not access sensitive information such as credit card information, passwords or national ID numbers, it said. Only one Taiwanese customer had their data stored, with the remaining data belonging to South Korean users, Coupang said.
The first of 10 new high-capacity trains purchased from South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem arrived at the Port of Taipei yesterday to meet the demands of an expanding metro network, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. The train completed a three-day, 1,200km voyage from the Port of Masan in South Korea, the company said. Costing NT$590 million (US$18.79 million) each, the new six-carriage trains feature a redesigned interior based on "human-centric" transportation concepts, TRTC said. The design utilizes continuous longitudinal seating to widen the aisles and optimize passenger flow, while also upgrading passenger information displays and driving control systems for a more comfortable
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
Taiwan's first indigenous defense submarine, the SS-711 Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), departed for its 13th sea trial at 7am today, marking its seventh submerged test, with delivery to the navy scheduled for July. The outing also marked its first sea deployment since President William Lai (賴清德) boarded the submarine for an inspection on March 19, drawing a crowd of military enthusiasts who gathered to show support. The submarine this morning departed port accompanied by CSBC Corp’s Endeavor Manta (奮進魔鬼魚號) uncrewed surface vessel and a navy M109 assault boat. Amid public interest in key milestones such as torpedo-launching operations and overnight submerged trials,
Quarantine awareness posters at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport have gone viral for their use of wordplay. Issued by the airport branch of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency, the posters feature sniffer dogs making a range of facial expressions, paired with advisory messages built around homophones. “We update the messages for holidays and campaign needs, periodically refreshing materials to attract people’s attention,” quarantine officials said. “The aim is to use the dogs’ appeal to draw focus to quarantine regulations.” A Japanese traveler visiting Taiwan has posted a photo on X of a poster showing a quarantine dog with a
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