■ MEDIA
MOFA protests designation
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said it had asked its representative office in Washington to lodge a protest against a US magazine for referring to first lady Chow Mei-ching (周美青) as the “first lady of China (Taiwan)” in its photo caption. The ministry will also demand a correction, MOFA spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said. Hopefully, the magazine will correct the error in a day or two, he added. The US magazine, Washington Life, published a photograph of Chow taken with members of the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (雲門舞集) when she accompanied the company on a North American tour in January. She was referred to as the “first lady of China (Taiwan)” in the caption. Next to Chow’s photograph was Chinese Ambassador to the US Zhou Wenzhong (周文重), who was identified as the envoy from the “People’s Republic of China.”
■ NATIONALITY
Nearly 10,000 naturalized
The nation added 9,853 naturalized citizens last year, with more than three-quarters coming from Vietnam, Ministry of the Interior data showed. The ministry said 98.09 percent of the new citizens were female, 98.62 percent were from Southeast Asia and 97.2 percent obtained Republic of China (ROC) passports through marriage. A breakdown of the origins of the newly naturalized showed that 76.7 percent came from Vietnam, 11 percent from Indonesia and 3.3 percent from the Philippines. Meanwhile, 844 ROC passport holders — 513 women and 331 men — gave up their citizenship last year to become citizens of other countries or because they got married to a foreign national. Of the total, 390 gave up their ROC citizenship for Japanese passports, 178 became South Korean citizens and 122 became Singapore citizens.
■ TRANSPORT
MAC denies tunnel plans
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday responded coolly to a Chinese engineer’s proposal that a tunnel be built under the Taiwan Strait as part of a high-speed railway line linking Taipei and Beijing. An MAC official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described it as a unilateral declaration by China and said Taiwan never had such a plan. “Besides, it is improper now for the two sides to talk about such a huge project, given the current political situation across the Taiwan Strait,” the official said. Wang Mengshu (王夢恕), a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and deputy chief of the China Railway Tunnel Group, told the China News Service recently that group executives would meet officials from Taiwan in May to discuss the high-speed rail tunnel project. “If everything goes smoothly, the undersea tunnel could be built in 10 years,” Wang said.
■ EDUCATION
US study fair to be held
A US education fair will be held in three cities from Saturday to next Tuesday, organizer American International Education Foundation said. A foundation spokesman said the representatives of more than 20 universities and colleges would fly to Taiwan to introduce their schools, which include San Diego State University, the University of California, Irvine, the University of California, San Diego and the University of Maryland. “Information on secondary schools will also be available at the fair,” the spokesman said. The fair will start at the CPC Corp Taiwan building in Taipei on Saturday and next Sunday, then move to the Grand Hi Lai Hotel in Kaohsiung next Monday and conclude at the Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Taichung next Tuesday.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
Actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has “returned home” to Taiwan, and there are no plans to hold a funeral for the TV star who died in Japan from influenza- induced pneumonia, her family said in a statement Wednesday night. The statement was released after local media outlets reported that Barbie Hsu’s ashes were brought back Taiwan on board a private jet, which arrived at Taipei Songshan Airport around 3 p.m. on Wednesday. To the reporters waiting at the airport, the statement issued by the family read “(we) appreciate friends working in the media for waiting in the cold weather.” “She has safely returned home.
A Vietnamese migrant worker on Thursday won the NT$12 million (US$383,590) jackpot on a scratch-off lottery ticket she bought from a lottery shop in Changhua County’s Puyan Township (埔鹽), Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. The lottery winner, who is in her 30s and married, said she would continue to work in Taiwan and send her winnings to her family in Vietnam to improve their life. More Taiwanese and migrant workers have flocked to the lottery shop on Sec 2 of Jhangshuei Road (彰水路) to share in the luck. The shop owner, surnamed Chen (陳), said that his shop has been open for just
MUST REMAIN FREE: A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would lead to a global conflict, and if the nation blows up, the world’s factories would fall in a week, a minister said Taiwan is like Prague in 1938 facing Adolf Hitler; only if Taiwan remains free and democratic would the world be safe, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The ministry on Saturday said Corriere della Sera is one of Italy’s oldest and most read newspapers, frequently covers European economic and political issues, and that Wu agreed to an interview with the paper’s senior political analyst Massimo Franco in Taipei on Jan. 3. The interview was published on Jan. 26 with the title “Taiwan like Prague in 1938 with Hitler,” the ministry