LABOR:
Taichung canceling foreign workers’ contracts
Over the past two months, an average of 20 foreign workers per day have had their work contracts in Taichung County terminated, the county’s Department of Labor Affairs said on Saturday. Since October, a growing number of foreign workers have been let go because of the economic downturn, department director Chang Ta-chun (張大春) said. The department will offer assistance to those workers if necessary, he said. Council of Labor Affairs statistics show that the nation has about 370,000 foreign workers. With the nation’s unemployment rate rising to 5.03 percent in December, some labor groups have called for a reduction in the quote on foreign workers to give more employment opportunities to local workers, council officials recently said.
SCHOOL:
Taiwan scholarship program accepting applications
The Scholarship Program of Taiwan is accepting applications from now until March 31, the Ministry of Education, the National Science Council, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) announced on Sunday. Citizens of selected countries who are interested in obtaining a degree or studying Mandarin in Taiwan are welcome to apply. Interested applicants can inquire local Republic of China embassies or representative offices or go to www.edu.tw/bicer or MOFA’s Web site at www.mofa.gov.tw for further information. E-mail inquiries can be sent to tsp@deps.ntnu.edu.tw. A total of 427 scholarships will be awarded.
POLICE:
Hsinchu police rewarded with Wang Chien-ming baseball
During the Lunar New Year holidays, the Hsinchu office of the National Immigration Agency (NIA) received a baseball signed by New York Yankees pitcher Wang Chien-ming (王建民) as a sign of gratitude for helping an American woman retrieve a lost passport. On Monday last week around 10.30pm, an American woman reported the loss of her mother’s passport to the NIA’s Hsinchu office. The woman said she, her husband and her mother had been out shopping, and that her mother had lost her wallet in a taxi on their way home. Among other important items things, the wallet contained her passport. The mother was frantic because she had to return to South Korea, where she is working as a teacher, on a flight that she had already booked for last Wednesday. Upon receiving the report, the NIA accompanied the woman to the Nanmen police station in Hsinchu to file a missing passport report. The officer in charge asked staff that were off duty to contact taxi companies to look for the lost wallet. Some officers even asked friends to assist in the search. As a result, the wallet was found intact with all its contents by 6am the next day. As a sign of gratitude, the woman’s husband presented the Hsinchu police station with a baseball that had been signed by Wang.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back