Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said yesterday the government would look into Taiwan participating at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which has listed the country’s representatives as either “Hsinchu, China” or “Taipei, China.”
Because Taiwan is neither a member of the UN nor a signatory nation to the UNFCCC, over the years Taiwan’s representatives from the government or civil sector have attended UNFCCC sessions as members of NGOs.
On the official Web site of the conference, which is to be held in Denmark in December, members of the Hsinchu-based Industrial Technology Research Institute — which includes government officials — are listed under “Hsinchu, China.”
Other participants from Taiwan — the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association, the Environmental Quality Protection Foundation and the Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy — are all listed as “Taipei, China.”
The name format is the same as that applied to NGOs from Beijing and Hong Kong. For example, China’s Research Center for Sustainable Development was listed as “Beijing, China” and Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden Corporation is listed as “Hong Kong, China.”
Saying that he had no idea why the country’s participants were listed under such a name format, Wu yesterday said the government would consider whether to take up the issue with the UNFCCC.
Wu said he had asked Vice Premier Eric Chu (朱立倫) to form a task force to handle the country’s bids to participate at the UNFCCC conference and at the International Civil Aviation Organization.
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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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