A Philippines Cultural Festival that includes a parade, song and dance performances and a Miss Talent contest will be held in downtown Taipei today -- which is Manila Day in the Philippines -- to celebrate Filipino culture, the Taipei City Government's Department of Labor announced yesterday.
The celebration, which is a part of the Southeast Asian Cultural Activities series organized by the Migrant Workers' Cultural Center, will honor the contributions of the more than 8,000 Filipino workers in Taipei City and is aimed at fostering understanding between Taiwanese and Filipinos, the department said.
The festival's first event will be a cultural parade that will start at St. Christopher's Church and travel to the Taipei Art Park, where the remaining activities will take place.
To highlight the diversity of Filipino culture, there will be song and dance performances by various indigenous tribes, a performance by the St. Christopher choir and musical performances by foreign groups.
The winner of the Miss Talent contest will receive a cash prize and a round-trip ticket between Taipei and Manila.
Taiwan's government has been very supportive of foreign workers, Manila Economic and Cultural Office labor representative Reynaldo Gopez said.
Father Romeo Velos of St. Christopher's Church, where thousands of Filipino Catholics gather every Sunday for Mass, said the international community is no longer homogeneous and that foreign workers are no longer just laborers and outsiders.
"They are, at the same time, residents and our brothers and sisters," Velos said.
In addition to the Filipino festival, the Taipei Department of Labor also organizes similar cultural events every year for workers who come from Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods