The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has mobilized local government agencies to participate in a series of clean-up initiatives this autumn, which will include 52 events and involve an estimated 18,000 participants.
As a response to the Clean Up the World Weekend, a community-based environmental campaign held on the third weekend of last month, the EPA said it has extended the concept and launched a series of clean-up events with local governments between last month and next month, including 24 mountain, 21 beach and seven river clean-up campaigns.
The series of campaigns aims to mobilize residents of townships, boroughs and civic volunteer groups to clean up the environment, which may help get rid of dengue fever mosquitoes in the process, the environmental agency said.
On Saturday, the Chiayi City Government held a clean-up campaign near Pachang Creek (八掌溪), in which river patrol team members instructed local residents on how to inspect and clean up the riverbank.
Another mountain clean-up campaign was held in Taipei, on the trails running along the Dagou Creek (大溝溪) and Bihu Park.
In addition, Tunghai University in Greater Taichung introduced its newly developed on-campus ecological art trail and solar electric vehicle to the public yesterday.
EPA Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏) attended the event.
The agency also urged everyone to uphold their civic duty by using reusable food containers and utensils when visiting scenic areas, making sure to not leave any trash behind and separating or recycling garbage according to their disposal categories.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift