EDUCATION
‘Taiwan Tech Trek’ starting
About 300 Taiwanese youths from abroad will visit Taiwan this summer to participate in an internship program titled “Taiwan Tech Trek,” the National Science Council said in a statement yesterday. The program consists of a six-day orientation program from tomorrow to Friday next week, which will be held at Ching Yun University in Taoyuan, and a seven-week internship from July 2 to Aug. 17 at 79 designated host institutes, said the council, which has organized the program. This year’s participants come from 26 countries and were selected from among 914 applicants, the council said. The main goal of the program, sponsored by the government, is to recruit a new generation of overseas Taiwanese youths to enhance the country’s global competitiveness, it said. Taiwan Tech Trek began in 2005 and more than 1,700 students have participated in the program over the past seven years. The program is part of the government’s overall effort to recruit new generations of overseas Taiwanese to help raise Taiwan’s overall competitiveness.
WEATHER
Sunny skies forecast
A more stable weather pattern is likely to emerge in most areas of the nation over the weekend as the southwesterly monsoon winds weaken, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. There is still a chance of showers, especially in southern and eastern Taiwan, until tomorrow, but they are not likely to be as heavy or as intense as over the past week, the bureau said. Meanwhile, temperatures are likely to rise sharply as the skies clear, reaching daily highs of about 33oC nationwide, the bureau said. The warmer weather could extend into next week, when cloudy to sunny skies are expected in most areas, the bureau forecast.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods