SOCIETY
Local pianist wins US prize
A Taiwanese pianist based in the US won the top prize at the San Antonio International Piano Competition on Saturday and was also honored for best performance of a Baroque work. Lin Lo-an (林洛安) pocketed US$15,000 for winning the competition’s gold medal and earned the chance to perform a solo recital with the San Antonio Symphony in the future. Lin, who began practicing piano at the age of five, has made a name for herself with several high-profile performances, including one at the Kennedy Center in Washington in 2006 and an appearance at the National Concert Hall in Taipei in June this year. The Taiwanese native, who went to the US to pursue her musical education nine years ago, also represented the US at a concert with the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada, in 2007. She is currently enrolled in the Artist Diploma program for gifted musicians at the Yale School of Music.
NATURE
Cross-strait talks on birds
A delegation from the Chongming Dongtan Birds Nature Reserve in Shanghai, China, will visit southern Taiwan from Saturday through Nov. 2 to promote exchanges on bird conservation, the Taijiang National Park said. It will be the first visit by officials from the world-class conservation area in China since a cooperation agreement on bird conservation and restoration was inked between the two sides in May this year, according to the park in Greater Tainan. The delegation will visit Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), Alishan (阿里山) and the wetlands in Tainan to observe black-faced spoonbills, which migrate to the island every year, park officials said. A former bird hunter, who is now considered a national treasure in China, will be part of the Chinese group, the officials said.
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