Taiwan and the US have signed an agreement renewing Taiwan’s participation in an international science and education program, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said on Monday.
The program is aimed at cultivating environmental stewardship, fostering intercultural understanding and facilitating scientific exchanges, the AIT said in a news release.
The agreement to renew Taiwan’s participation in the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program for another five years was signed by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US and the AIT on Aug. 14.
The program, which was launched by the US in 1994, provides students and the general public around the world the opportunity to participate in data collection and the scientific processes to allow them to contribute meaningfully to the understanding of the Earth and the global environment, its Web site says.
Since joining in 2013, Taiwan has been an active contributor to the community of 120 participating countries, the news release said, adding that the nation has hosted international conferences and brought students from India, Thailand, the Philippines, Mongolia and Malaysia to collaborate on events.
Also recognized by fellow members for its data contributions to the GLOBE scientific community, Taiwan was the sixth and third-largest contributor in 2015 and 2016 respectively, the AIT said.
Hopefully, Taiwan can serve as a role model for the Indo-Pacific region with its “robust contributions,” it quoted GLOBE chairman Tony Murphy as saying.
In separate news, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday announced that Taiwan and Luxembourg have signed an agreement paving the way for a reciprocal working holiday program.
The agreement was signed on Aug. 21 by the representatives of the two nations, it said.
Taiwan and Luxembourg would each have an annual quota of 40 citizens between the ages of 18 and 30 who may travel and work in the other country for up to one year, the ministry said.
The ministry said it expects the deal to help advance bilateral tourism, as well as cultural and youth exchanges.
More details about the program and its launch date would be announced by the end of the year at the earliest, it said.
Luxembourg is the 11th European nation and the 16th country worldwide to sign a working holiday agreement with Taiwan, the ministry said.
The other 15 are Germany, the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
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