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.
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
UNREASONABLE SURVEILLANCE: A camera targeted on an road by a neighbor captured a man’s habitual unsignaled turn into home, netting him dozens of tickets The Taichung High Administrative Court has canceled all 45 tickets given to a man for failing to use a turn signal while driving, as it considered long-term surveillance of his privacy more problematic than the traffic violations. The man, surnamed Tseng (曾), lives in Changhua County and was reported 45 times within a month for failing to signal while driving when he turned into the alley where his residence is. The reports were filed by his neighbor, who set up security cameras that constantly monitored not only the alley but also the door and yard of Tseng’s house. The surveillance occurred from July
TRADE-OFF: Beijing seeks to trade a bowl of tempura for a Chinese delicacy, an official said, while another said its promises were attempts to interfere in the polls The government must carefully consider the national security implications of building a bridge connecting Kinmen County and Xiamen, China, the Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday. PCC Commissioner Derek Chen (陳金德), who is also a minister without portfolio, made the remarks in a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Fu-kuei (徐富癸) asked about China’s proposal of new infrastructure projects to further connect Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties with Xiamen. China unveiled the bridge plan, along with nine other policies for Taiwan, on Sunday, the last day of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) visit
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