ENTERTAINMENT
Chthonic barred from HK
Taiwanese metal band Chthonic, which advocates independence, yesterday said that it had to cancel a show in Hong Kong after failing to get visas in time. “The Hong Kong government has kept delaying and has yet to issue work visas... We have no choice but to cancel the show,” Chthonic said in a statement on Facebook. Denise Ho (何韻詩), a pro-democracy Cantopop star who invited Chthonic to perform at a festival, said on Facebook that immigration officials had not responded to the applications, which were filed last month. The Web site for Hong Kong’s immigration authorities states that work visas can take up to four weeks to process, but Ho said that music acts usually get approved within a week. “This is purely an exchange of music. What is there to be afraid of?” Ho wrote. The band was founded in 1995 by Freddy Lim (林昶佐), who in 2016 won a seat as a New Power Party legislator.
AGRICULTURE
Pig farmers to get subsidies
The government is to subsidize small-scale pig farmers who use pigswill as feed, but lack the equipment to properly treat food waste, to help them transition to crop-based feed in an effort to guard against African swine fever, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday. After a closed-door meeting with hog farmers in Yunlin County, Tsai said that the subsidy would become available to operators who lack adequate heating equipment to treat leftover waste. The potential spread of the disease from China is a major issue, as it could severely hurt the pig farming industry, Tsai said, adding that farmers must make a collective effort to reduce the risk. Acting Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲), who accompanied Tsai, said that swill must be heated to 90°C for an hour to kill all pathogens. Yunlin County has about 1.45 million hogs, the largest number of any municipality, Yunlin County Commissioner Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) said.
ELECTIONS
Date for by-elections set
Legislative by-elections for seats in Tainan, and Changhua and Kinmen counties vacated by winners in last month’s nine-in-one elections are to be held on March 16, the Central Election Commission said. The seat representing Tainan’s second electoral district is to be contested after it was vacated by Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲), who won the city’s mayoral race. In Changhua’s first electoral district, Wang Hui-mei (王惠美) gave up her seat after she was elected Changhua county commissioner. Yang Cheng-wu (楊鎮浯) is leaving the Legislative Yuan after winning the race for Kinmen county commissioner. According to the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), a by-election has to be held within three months of a legislative seat being vacated when more than one year remains of the term to be served.
IMMIGRATION
Naturalization data released
Sixty-five highly qualified foreigners have become naturalized citizens over the past two years since an amendment to the Nationality Act (國籍法) took effect, the Ministry of the Interior said on Wednesday. Fifty-two foreign professionals received Republic of China citizenship this year and 13 last year without having to renounce other nationalities after the amended act came into effect on Dec. 21, 2016, Department of Household Registration Deputy Director Cheng Hsin-wei (鄭信偉) said. Thirty-two work in education, with 29 teaching at universities, Cheng said, adding that the lion’s share were from the US.
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