The Cabinet-level Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) is poised to promote the service sector as part of the government's efforts to minimize the impact of the Kyoto Protocol on Taiwan's industry, a CEPD spokesman said yesterday.
The CEPD, Taiwan's highest economic policy-making agency, will swing into full gear soon to promote that goal in the coming four years, and it expects to lift the service sector's output value to NT$8.99 trillion (US$285.4 billion).
About NT$4.78 trillion will be generated by knowledge-intensive businesses -- some 31.9 percent of the country's GDP, the official said, adding that around 61.39 million workers will be employed in the sector. He stressed that the government will advocate energy-saving service businesses in the future by stepping up industrial upgrading and added value productivity.
The Kyoto Protocol, designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, became effective Wednesday in more than 140 countries around the world.
Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations or a signatory to the protocol, but local environmentalists have urged the government to adhere to the pact as a constructive member of the global village.
In response, the government will still encourage hi-tech industries rather than traditional ones, the production of which will be limited to satisfying local demand in the future.
Technical assistance task forces set up under the MOEA kicked off operations that same day to help promote energy-effective measures to 2,900 consumers. Private sector companies in the steel and electronics industries, hypermarkets, department stores, hospitals and thermal power plants, as well as public agencies, state-run enterprises and schools, will be targeted by the task forces, which will provide on-the-spot energy-saving technical assistance focusing on recycling, pollution prevention and reuse of industrial waste water.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching