■ Education
More foreigners to be hired
Head of the British Council, Taipei Office Gordon Slaven signed a service contract
for recruiting foreign English teachers yesterday with Lau Ching-jen (劉慶仁), head of the Cultural Division of Taipei Representative Office in the UK, who represented the Bureau of International and Educational Relations. The UK is now the second country to recruit qualified English teachers, following Canada. The British government will recruit native speakers with qualification in teaching before Oct. 31 to fill 70 posts. Qualified candidates are expected to start teaching
next February. Bureau officials said the
new teachers would probably teach in remote areas. Those schools which can provide accommodation for the teachers will be given first consideration.
■ Military Affairs
Ethnic balance changes
Retired soldiers from the Taiwanese and Hakka ethnic groups account for more than half of the total of some 530,000 veterans, officials from the Veterans Affairs Commission (VAC) said yesterday. The officials made the remarks at a seminar
on ethnic integration held
to discuss issues concerning cross-strait marriages and veterans going to China for settlement. In the past, the mainlanders who retreated to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) in 1949 made up the bulk of veterans,
but commission Chairman
Kao Hua-chu (高華柱) said yesterday that as of the end of last year, there were more than 282,000 veterans from the Taiwanese and Hakka ethnic groups, surpassing one half of the total of around 530,000. There were also around 7,500 veterans from Aboriginal groups.
■ Politics
DPP will court Lee
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will invite
former president Lee Teng-
hui (李登輝) to stump for its candidates in December's legislative elections, DPP secretary-general Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) said yesterday. Chang said
the DPP and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) are partners and that both parties had cooperated in many areas in the past. He said it was inevitable that there would
be competition between the parties during the year-end elections, and noted that a portion of supporters for the two parties overlapped. He added that the DPP would "properly handle its relations with the TSU." Chang said that it was undeniable that Lee, the spiritual leader of
the TSU, was a trump card
for that party in its election campaign, but that the DPP would still invite him to stump for DPP candidates.
■ Trade
Outlets to open in Japan
The nation has its sights on expanding its international presence in farm and aquacultural produce, with the Council of Agriculture paying particular attention
to the Japanese market,
a council spokesman said yesterday. The council
plans to open "fine Taiwan agricultural produce centers" in Tokyo and Osaka to introduce the produce in Japan, he said. In line with a set of promotional guidelines and packages for overseas sales, the council has recently targeted star fruit, papaya and guava for overseas markets. In addition, moth orchids, oolong tea, mangoes and bream have been labeled as flagship products for export, he said. Taiwan's agricultural trade hit US$6.217 billion
in the first half of the
year. Inbound shipments outstripped outbound shipments US$4.52 billion to US$1.67 billion, leaving the country with a deficit of US$2.82 billion, up by 29 percent over the previous year's level.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
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