The annual International Austronesian Conference started yesterday in Taipei with the aim of promoting international Austronesian exchanges and enhancing the global visibility of Taiwan’s Aborigines.
During the two-day conference, academics and experts from Taiwan, New Zealand, the US, Canada and other countries are set to speak about the applications, teaching methods and future prospects of Aboriginal education.
“We hope the conference will help raise the international visibility of Taiwanese Aborigines,” Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister Mayaw Dongi (林江義) said at the opening ceremony.
He added that he hopes the conference will also help support his council’s effort to push for more village schools to help recover the traditional cultures of Aborigines.
The Maori education system in New Zealand, for example, could serve as a model for the schools in Taiwan, the council said in a statement.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said it is “significant” that the conference is being held in Taiwan, the place that many academics believe is the origin of the Austronesian people.
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