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 Grand Hotel Taipei on Saturday confirmed that its information system had been illegally accessed and expressed its deepest apologies for the concern it has caused its customers, adding that the issue is being investigated by the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau. The hotel said that on Tuesday last week, it had discovered an external illegal intrusion into its information system. An initial digital forensic investigation confirmed that parts of the system had been accessed, it said, adding that the possibility that some customer data were stolen and leaked could not be ruled out. The actual scope and content of the affected data
DO THEY BITE IT? Cats have better memories than people might think, but their motivation is based entirely around the chance of getting fed Cats can remember the identity of the people who fed them the day before, Taipei-based veterinarians said on Friday, debunking a popular myth that cats have a short memory. If a stray does not recognize the person who fed them the previous day, it is likely because they are not carrying food and the cat has no reason to recognize them, said Wu Chou Animal Hospital head Chen Chen-huan (陳震寰). “When cats come to a human bearing food, it is coming for the food, not the person,” he said. “The food is the key.” Since the cat’s attention is on the food, it
Taiwan must act to preempt potential Section 301 investigations as US President Donald Trump moves to a new tariff strategy, following a US Supreme Court ruling that voided tariff measures, an academic said yesterday. Countries running the largest trade surpluses with the US face a growing likelihood of Section 301 investigations, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. Section 301 refers to a provision of the Trade Act of 1974 that allows Washington to impose retaliatory tariffs over perceived unfair trade practices, including the running of large trade surpluses. Because Taiwan has become the fourth-largest source of the US’ trade
People hold incense and pray with offerings in front of Taipei’s Kuanghwa Market yesterday. The fifth day of the Lunar New Year is traditionally about welcoming the God of Wealth, during which companies and shops set off firecrackers to celebrate their reopening and pray for good business in the new year.
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