The Ministry of the Interior has granted Taiwanese citizenship to seven foreign professionals, including award-winning Belgian composer Thomas Foguenne.
A total of 245 foreign professionals have been granted citizenship since the government amended the Nationality Act (國籍法) in December 2016, the ministry said yesterday.
The seven professionals were eligible to receive Taiwanese citizenship without renouncing their original nationality, according to the amended act.
Photo: Hu Shuan-hsiang, Taipei Times
Foguenne is a member of Sabam, the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers. He has written the scores for more than 80 videos and films since 2011, the ministry said.
He was nominated for three Golden Bell Awards for best sound in 2016, 2017 and 2018, winning the award in 2016 and in 2018.
Another professional who was granted citizenship is a Vietnamese woman surnamed Tran (陳).
She specializes in advanced technologies including nanotechnology, energy conservation and artificial intelligence.
She has had 20 papers published in the Science Citation Index, a quarterly journal that publishes papers and articles in all fields of research.
Tran has also published four books and her outstanding research ability has helped Taiwan improve its professional technologies, the ministry said.
A Spanish man teaching Chinese, as well as corporate ethics and international economics, was also granted citizenship.
Naturalized professionals have the right to participate in Taiwanese politics and benefit from social welfare programs, the ministry said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS