Culture
Farmers try to break record
A total of 1,200 Taiwanese farmers will try to break the Guinness World Record for the biggest number of people simultaneously transplanting rice seedlings on a plot of land next week, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday. The farmers will attempt to transplant rice seedlings on a 2 hectare plot of land in under 25 minutes, the council said. The event will be held in Taoyuan County on Aug. 18. The purpose of the event is to promote rice consumption in Taiwan, the council said. According to Guinness World Records, the current record was set on May 6, 2010, and stands at 904 people on a 1.6 hectare plot of land in 30 minutes, 35 seconds.
Culture
Taiwanese art in Venice
A large-scale corrugated paper artwork featuring Taiwan’s natural scenery will be displayed at an international architectural exhibition in Venice later this month, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The piece is expected to attract the attention of the foreign media,” said Hsu Mien-sheng (徐勉生), director-general of the ministry’s Department of European Affairs. The artwork, titled Enlightenment from Geography, will be on display from Aug. 27 to Nov. 25 at the Venice Biennale International Architecture Exhibition, a major contemporary art show. Describing Taiwan’s presence at the show as an “exhibition of soft power,” Hsu said the foreign ministry would continue to support cultural exchanges. The paper artwork would allow visitors to gain a sense of Taiwan’s natural wonders and street scenes, said Liao Wei-li (廖偉立), one of the piece’s designers and an architect at Taiwan-based AMBi Studio, adding that the work also features audio that features sounds of nature and the city.
ENERGY
Kaohsiung aims to go solar
The Greater Kaohsiung Government aims to generate 100,000 watt-peak (Wp) of electricity from local solar panels for the whole of this year, according to the city’s Office of Building Administration. To achieve this, the city government has been cooperating with the Bureau of Energy’s Million Rooftop Photovoltaics project to encourage local households and businesses to install solar panels and expand solar energy facilities, the office said. The city government has established new laws that relax regulations for installing rooftop photovoltaic facilities and is offering subsidies as part of its solar energy execution plan, the office said. The southern city receives over 2,100 hours of sunlight per year, and is therefore better positioned to set up solar energy facilities than Taiwan’s northern and central areas, said Yang Ming-chou (楊明州), chief of the city’s Public Works Bureau. The bureau aims to build solar energy facilities with a combined size of 10 Kaohsiung National Stadiums over the next three years, Yang said.
EDUCATION
Students debate
Students from 16 universities from Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Russia and Australia are to go head-to-head in a debating competition tomorrow. The theme of the five-day contest will be Taiwan’s public policies, said the National Chiao Tung University’s (NCTU) Department of Communication and Technology, the organizer of the contest. Taiwan’s National Chengchi University and Soochow University will face the University of Malaya and China’s Soochow University respectively in the preliminary round of the competition, which runs from tomorrow until Thursday at NCTU’s College of Hakka Studies.
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