■ Culture
Schools hold language event
Taipei City's public and private senior high schools held a joint exhibition of assignments and performances by students in different languages yesterday to showcase their achievements in language learning. Performances were staged at three municipal senior high schools, with students wearing the traditional costumes of different countries to present either plays or sing to the audience. At Taipei Municipal Songshan Senior High School, performances were given in German, Spanish and Korean. Performances in French and Latin were staged at Taipei Municipal Hsisung Senior High School, with more than 2,000 students from 27 schools enrolled in French courses. Taipei Municipal First Girl's High School is the only school in the city offering a Latin course, and its student's performed in the language. Performances in Japanese, the language being learned by the most students in Taipei, were held at Taipei Municipal Chunglun Senior High School.
■ Tourism
F4 boost tourism
Local pop group F4, named as representatives for the nation's tourist industry this year, has attracted nearly 5,000 fans from Japan and South Korea hoping to meet their idols today at National Taiwan University's sports center, a Tourism Bureau official said. The fans will create about NT$100 million (US$3 million) in sightseeing revenue for Taiwan, a bureau estimate said. F4 will perform and meet their fans, the official said, adding that the bureau has planned another meeting with F4 as a competition prize to attract even more tourists. Quoting bureau statistics, the official said Japanese tourists made 1.16 million visits to Taiwan and South Koreans made 196,260 visits. The bureau hopes to attract more visitors from these two countries using F4 as a draw. The meeting will be aired on the Internet at www.im.tv/myvlog/JVKVtaiwan.
■ Economics
Nobel winner to visit
Muhammad Yunus, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize, has accepted an invitation to visit Taiwan, the chairman of the Taipei-based Cross-Strait Common Market Foundation said yesterday. Former premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) made the announcement at the opening ceremony of the 2007 Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), being held in the coastal town of Boao in China's Hainan Province. Siew is attending the regional economic event in his capacity as head of a group of Taiwanese entrepreneurs. During a brief meeting at the forum, Siew invited Yunus to visit Taiwan, he said. Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below."
■ Society
Watchdog to help victim
The Consumers' Foundation is intervening on behalf of a young woman in her bid for compensation from Chinatrust Commercial Bank for trauma she suffered as a result of a January mock bank robbery that she believed was real at the time. Foundation chairman Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) said the woman was in the bank's Chungshan branch when the bank staged the anti-robbery drill without giving any prior notice to customers. Caught unaware by the exercise, in which a "robber" wielding a gun stood right next to her, the woman nearly collapsed and had difficulty breathing following the exercise, Cheng said. The woman was hospitalized for 10 days. She is still receiving outpatient treatment and is unable to work.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
AMENDMENT: Contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau must be reported, and failure to comply could result in a prison sentence, the proposal stated The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday voted against a proposed bill by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers that would require elected officials to seek approval before visiting China. DPP Legislator Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) proposed amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), stipulate that contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau should be reported, while failure to comply would be punishable by prison sentences of up to three years, alongside a fine of NT$10 million (US$309,041). Fifty-six voted with the TPP in opposition
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai