EDUCATION
Students to teach Mandarin
Students from National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) will have an unprecedented opportunity this summer to teach Mandarin Chinese at a US elementary school, the university’s Department of Applied Chinese Language and Literature said yesterday. The university’s students have taught at overseas Chinese language centers or schools, but this summer the students will teach for the first time at an all-American elementary school — Terra Verde Discovery School in Oklahoma — said professor Tsai Ya-hsun (蔡雅薰), the head of the department. The department was established in 2007 with a mission to cultivate professionals to teach Chinese as a second language abroad. Aside from its new partnership with the Oklahoma school, the university will also collaborate with an elementary school in San Diego that offers extensive Chinese language classes — Barnard Elementary School.
HEALTH
Fish fails health check
Taipei City Government’s health officials said yesterday that one of 10 seafood products recently selected for random checks contained banned drugs. Officials from the city’s Department of Health said that samples of John Dory, an expensive fish that is considered a gourmet item, were found to contain 0.002 ppm of ciprofloxacin and 0.01 ppm of enrofloxacin, which are veterinary drugs that are banned for use in fish in Taiwan. The fish has been ordered removed from store shelves. To protect consumers, the department checked seafood products at restaurants and various other outlets last month. The officials said that the suppliers of the tainted fish will be fined between NT$60,000 (US$2,003) and NT$6 million for violating the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法). Meanwhile, in a random check of fruit and vegetables on the market, the officials found that 13 out of 75 products had excessive pesticide content.
EDUCATION
Ministry tackles drug abuse
The Ministry of Education launched an anti-drug campaign yesterday ahead of the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, to promote a drug-free learning environment for children. The ministry selected Echinacea, commonly known as the purple coneflower, as the symbol of its initiative, which it dubbed the Echinacea Campaign. An official Web site was also launched, offering downloadable cards bearing images of the purple coneflower in nine different languages, including English, Japanese, French and Korean. Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) urged the public to distribute the cards among families and friends abroad in a bid to globalize the campaign.
NATIONAL DEFENSE
MND mulls fighter retrofit
Taiwan is reviewing a proposal submitted by the US for the retrofit of Taiwan’s F-16 A/B jet fighters, military officials said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense (MND) is looking at the proposal to determine whether the listed military equipment and the prices are in line with Taiwan’s warfare needs, ministry spokesman Major General David Lo (羅紹和) said in a statement. Taiwan and the US will sign a deal on the retrofit package after the ministry completes its review, the air force said. Included in the fighters’ retrofit is the installation of Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, which costs US$600 million, officials said. Other items on the list include AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits.
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