Authorities have promised to restore a man’s identification documents after his Republic of China (ROC) household registration and passport were canceled following a trip to Russia with a temporary Chinese passport last month.
The man, surnamed, Yen (顏), was part of a 20-member group that last month went on a five-day tour of China and Vladivostok in Russia. The tour agency helped the travelers obtain temporary Chinese passports after they arrived in Changchun, China, on Oct. 4, which provided them visa-free entry into Russia, the United Daily News reported yesterday.
According to Chinese law, only Chinese nationals are eligible to apply for a passport. In other words, Taiwanese travelers holding Chinese passports for travel to Russia are considered Chinese nationals.
However, the temporary passport contains a specification that it is “valid for single exit and entry with a tourist group only.”
Despite this provision, Yen was notified late last month by the household registration office in Taichung that his Taiwanese household registration and passport had been canceled because he holds a Chinese passport valid for up to three months, the report said.
Yen was also informed that his household registration and Taiwan ID card would be restored once he produced a document to prove the Chinese passport has been revoked, a Taichung household registration office official said yesterday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said if the Ministry of the Interior agrees to restore the man’s nationality, he will be able to reapply for a new ROC passport.
MOFA said that according to Taiwanese law, only ROC nationals with household registration in Taiwan are eligible to apply for an ROC passport. Applying for a People’s Republic of China passport disqualifies a person from having household registration in Taiwan and an ROC passport.
However, if the Ministry of the Interior agrees to allow Yen to restore his nationality status, he can reapply for a ROC passport and MOFA’s Bureau of Consular Affairs will help him with the application.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,