To help increase the competitiveness of Taiwan's agricultural biotechnology sector following the country's accession to the WTO, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday a non-profit National Re-search Institute of Agricultural Science would be established.
The Cabinet will also set up a commission to review and revise policies governing academics to give them greater flexibility to choose their career paths as Taiwan becomes a knowledge-based society, he said.
Yu made the remarks at the closing ceremony of an Emerging Industrial Technology and Strategy Review Board meeting.
The five-day event, organized by the Cabinet's Science and Technology Advisory Group, was attended by local and international technology experts who offered recommendations on biotechnology, industrial science and technology, telecommunications and agricultural biotechnology.
Purnell Choppin, president emeritus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the US, said that a solution to many problems faced by Taiwan's agriculture biotech community would be to establish a national research institute that could coordinate efforts among the government, academia and industry.
"It's important that it has the overall responsibility for coordinating activities in agricultural biotechnology and eliminates bureaucracy currently resident in other institutions," Choppin said.
According to Minister Without Portfolio Tsay Ching-yen (蔡清彥), the Cabinet will establish the research center by transforming the eight existing agriculture research centers under the Cabinet's Council of Agriculture from government institutions to non-profit organizations.
"One of the biggest advantages for doing so is that the organizations will have more flexibility to recruit professional experts while government institutions can only hire civil servants," he said.
Besides, it would be fairly easy for the council, which receives annual government funding of NT$3 billion, to set aside NT$30 million to set up a non-profit entity as required by law, Tsay said.
David Mowery, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said that Taiwan's government should review what he said were inflexible policies governing university faculty members.
"The goal of such a review should be the deregulation of university personnel policies for faculty to allow greater scope for research collaboration with industrial firms and movement of faculty from universities to industry and from industry to universities," he said.
Mowery also proposed establishing a commission to review the role and structure of Taiwanese public and private universities.
"This commission should consider ways to enhance institutional autonomy, independence of central control and flexibility in administrative policy and strategy within Taiwan's university system," he said.
Actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛) has “returned home” to Taiwan, and there are no plans to hold a funeral for the TV star who died in Japan from influenza- induced pneumonia, her family said in a statement Wednesday night. The statement was released after local media outlets reported that Barbie Hsu’s ashes were brought back Taiwan on board a private jet, which arrived at Taipei Songshan Airport around 3 p.m. on Wednesday. To the reporters waiting at the airport, the statement issued by the family read “(we) appreciate friends working in the media for waiting in the cold weather.” “She has safely returned home.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
A Vietnamese migrant worker on Thursday won the NT$12 million (US$383,590) jackpot on a scratch-off lottery ticket she bought from a lottery shop in Changhua County’s Puyan Township (埔鹽), Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. The lottery winner, who is in her 30s and married, said she would continue to work in Taiwan and send her winnings to her family in Vietnam to improve their life. More Taiwanese and migrant workers have flocked to the lottery shop on Sec 2 of Jhangshuei Road (彰水路) to share in the luck. The shop owner, surnamed Chen (陳), said that his shop has been open for just
MUST REMAIN FREE: A Chinese takeover of Taiwan would lead to a global conflict, and if the nation blows up, the world’s factories would fall in a week, a minister said Taiwan is like Prague in 1938 facing Adolf Hitler; only if Taiwan remains free and democratic would the world be safe, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The ministry on Saturday said Corriere della Sera is one of Italy’s oldest and most read newspapers, frequently covers European economic and political issues, and that Wu agreed to an interview with the paper’s senior political analyst Massimo Franco in Taipei on Jan. 3. The interview was published on Jan. 26 with the title “Taiwan like Prague in 1938 with Hitler,” the ministry