IMMIGRATION
Pianist gets citizenship
German pianist Rolf-Peter Wille on Monday received his national ID card, officially making him a Republic of China (ROC) citizen. “I’m not feeling like a stranger here. Thank you all for treating me as a son of Taiwan,” Wille said at an award ceremony organized by Taipei’s Daan (大安) Household Registration Office. Pianist Lina Yeh (葉綠娜), Wille’s wife, also attended the ceremony. Wille is the sixth foreign national to be granted ROC citizenship in Taipei because of his remarkable professional performance and is the first foreign musician to receive a national ID card. Wille said he has viewed Taiwan as his homeland since arriving at age 24. “Over the past 40 years, I’ve been a son-in-law in Taiwan and I feel I’m more a Taiwanese now,” he said, adding that his entire professional career and musical life is profoundly entwined with Taiwan. Wille and Yeh are the best-known piano duo in the nation. Wille teaches at Taipei National University of the Arts.
TOURISM
Crystal Church declared safe
A popular tourist attraction in Tainan known as the “Crystal Church” is to soon be made available for wedding ceremonies, the Southwest Coast National Scenic Area Administration said. The structure has passed a city safety inspection and an operating license has been awarded to a private company that is to promote the site to couples, the agency said. The Crystal Church, a solitary artistic structure that opened in the city’s Beimen District (北門) in October 2014, is popular as a backdrop for photographs, but visitors have not been allowed to get close to it or enter. It is hoped that opening it to wedding ceremonies would help it become a new hot spot for wedding planners, the agency 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