CULTURE
Taiwan festival to begin
The annual Taiwan Plus cultural festival in Japan is to be held in Kyoto for the first time on Saturday and Sunday, showcasing the Taiwanese religious icon Mazu and featuring live performances by popular music acts, an event promoter said yesterday. The festival, which celebrates the rapport between Taiwan and Japan, would include an exhibition about the sea goddess enshrined in Fengtian Temple in Hsinkang, Chiayi County, the Kyoto City Tourism Association said. There would also be live music shows, featuring Taiwanese folk singer Chen Ming-chang (陳明章), Hakka pop singer Hsieh Yu-Wei (謝宇威) and Puyuma Family Band, an indigenous band whose members have won more than 10 Golden Melody awards. During the event, the Taiwanese artists would also collaborate with their Japanese counterparts, such as the Style Kyoto Orchestra and conductor Kimbo Ishii, the association said. Other well-known participants include Kyoto Tachibana Senior-High School marching band and Japanese Noh music performer Tatsunori Kongo, it said. Besides music, a bazaar featuring Taiwanese food and culture from about 100 local brands would offer delicacies including bubble milk tea, pastries, beer and jam, it said. The event is to run from 11am to 6pm.
EDUCATION
Teacher suspended
The Taichung Bureau of Education said it has fined and imposed a four-year teaching ban on a preschool teacher who threatened a child with scissors, while also ordering the school that employed her to halt new enrollments for one year. The bureau said it received a tip-off earlier last month and contracted an outside investigator on April 22 to examine the case. The investigator’s report said that the teacher forcibly held down a child with special needs, threatened a child with a pair of scissors and made children run laps around a track as a punishment. After a meeting on the situation on Tuesday last week, the bureau said it had fined the female teacher NT$400,000 and banned her from working at educational institutions for four years.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
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