The pan-blue camp and the pan-green camp yesterday bickered over the government's failure to keep its promise to withdraw its personnel and dispose of shareholdings in terrestrial TV stations by yesterday's deadline.
Pan-blue camp lawmakers, including People First Party legislators Diane Lee (李慶安) and Lee Yong-ping (李永萍), and Chinese Nationalist Party Legislators (KMT) Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛), said that it was the Government Information Office's (GIO) fault because the GIO's policy on the issue has been inconsistent.
GIO Minister Pasuya Yao (
"The regulation has been pending on the legislative floor for months. We never changed anything. The only change that we made was to suggest relocating Chinese Television System [CTS,
There is one public television station in Taiwan, Public Television Service (PTS,
The government owns 25.64 percent of TTV and 36.25 percent of CTS. The stakes in both companies long predate the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
The Broadcasting and Television Law (
The legislature, however, is deadlocked over a draft bill -- the Act to Handle Government-owned Shares of Terrestrial TV Stations (
"The act has been pending on the legislative floor since June 24, 2004. I became the minister on March 14 this year. If lawmakers were willing to help, the act should have become a law and all these problems would not exist today," Yao said.
In the meantime, the chairmen and presidents of both TTV and CTS -- all of whom were appointed by the DPP government -- offered their resignations to the Ministry of Finance, which governs the firms, on Sunday.
As of press time yesterday, Yao was still meeting with Minister of Finance Lin Chuan (
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the
RSS