The military is conforming with the Executive Yuan's drought-fighting measures and is prepared to lend its support by helping to transport water or generate artificial rain, a Defense Ministry spokesman said yesterday.
Major General Huang Suey-sheng (
The ministry has also ordered a thorough assessment of water-intensive practices and equipment so that further water-usage restrictions can be implemented under the precondition that neither their function nor their combat-preparedness is affected, Huang said.
Fire trucks, transport ships, and various kinds of water-purifying equipment are ready to be called on in the event that they are needed, while the Air Force weather unit is standing by ready to generate artificial rain, Huang added.
At the same news conference, an official in charge of military manpower said that the ministry plans to recruit 1,018 soldiers for voluntary service in three experimental battalions starting January next year, pending the Cabinet's approval.
Providing further detail on a plan announced last week, the official said that all commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted soldiers in the three battalions will be voluntary service members.
The defense ministry will evaluate the three-year program at the end of each year to determine how it can continue proceeding with its plans to shift toward a military force that is less dependent on conscripted soldiers and more on professional recruits, the official said.
The objective is to gradually lower the percentage of conscripts to 40 percent of the total force, the official added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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