The Taipei City Government is hoping to turn the American Institute in Taiwan’s (AIT) current site into a home for the Taipei Symphony Orchestra and the Taipei Chinese Orchestra.
The Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs wants to build a municipal concert hall in Daan District (大安) after the AIT relocates to a new complex under construction in Neihu District (內湖), department Commissioner Chung Yung-feng (鍾永豐) said.
A new hall would provide a dedicated venue for the two orchestras, he said.
The 48-year-old symphony orchestra and the 38-year-old Chinese orchestra now use Zhongshan Hall (中山堂) for performances.
A municipal concert hall would help promote Taipei’s music industry and work closely with educational institutions, Chung said.
The department is also considering turning the Taipei Flower Expo’s exhibition hall into an extension of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, which would help address the museum’s pressing need for space and modern facilities, Chung said.
The proposals are expected to be submitted to Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) office by the middle of this year, Chung said.
If Ko approves the department’s proposal for the AIT site, the city government will negotiate with the Ministry of Education for the right to use the property, Chung said.
The ministry owns the land.
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