The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) second Asia Democracy Forum, to be held in Taipei this weekend, is to focus on environmental, energy and sustainability issues in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
Nineteen non-governmental organizations from 10 countries are to attend the forum at National Taiwan University on Saturday and Sunday, DPP Deputy Secretary-General Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said.
Former Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲), former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and Taiwan Environmental Protection Union director Liou Gin-show (劉俊秀) and vice director Liou Chih-chien (劉志堅) are to address environmental problems in Taiwan and the world, Cho said.
Photo: CNA
Representatives of environmental groups from Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia are to speak about sustainability challenges, pollution, climate change mitigation, energy transition and other environmental issues in their countries, Cho said.
The forum is aimed at boosting exchanges between Taiwan and other Asian countries, which is of pivotal importance to guiding environmental movements in those countries, much as Taiwanese environmentalists have drawn from European and US experiences to advance their efforts over the past three decades, said Shih Hsin-min (施信民), the founding chairman of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union.
“Taiwan has rarely connected with Southeast Asian countries on environmental topics, except for nuclear power issues, and environmentalism should be an important aspect of Taiwan’s cooperation with those countries, which is overwhelmingly centered on economic issues,” Shih said.
Cho reaffirmed the DPP’s energy transition objectives, including phasing out nuclear power by 2025 and boosting the share of energy from renewable sources from 4 percent in 2015 to 20 percent in 2025.
“The government will not give up the goal of a nuclear-free homeland by 2025, he said. “It insists on attaining this goal. Meanwhile, the government has to make sure an ample supply of power and water to strike a balance between environmental protection and development."
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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