Wed, Nov 06, 2002 page3

• Taiwan quick take

  • STAFF WRITER, WITH AGENCIES
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  ■ Academics

  Nobel laureate to visit

  Chinese Nobel laureate Yang Zhengning (楊振寧) is scheduled to visit Taiwan on Sunday to help promote academic exchanges between Taiwan and China, his host said yesterday. The 80-year-old Yang, who won the 1957 Nobel prize in physics, will hold seminars in celebration of his birthday, said officials of the Academia Sinica. Yang was invited by Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) for a four-day visit, officials said.

  ■ Media

  English TV program launched

  Taichung yesterday launched Taiwan's first 24-hour English-teaching TV program to promote English as the second official language. Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) presided over the ceremony launching the cable TV program, Hello Taichung. The program can be watched by all cable TV subscribers in Taichung City, central Taiwan. "The launch of Hello Taichung is very important because it can help us join the global village," he said. "I hope that Taiwan residents will spend more time learning English so that one day our English level can surpass that of others," he said.

  ■ Education

  Principal fined for outburst

  A principal at an elementary school has been ordered to pay a teacher NT$150,000 after implying he was a "communist" in a public row. During an angry exchange at a school meeting three years ago the defendant, surnamed Lin, asked a teacher at the school outside Taipei "you are not a communist, are you?" The teacher, identified on local cable television TVBS only as Chan, filed charges in a civil lawsuit. "Here in Taiwan `communist' is generally accepted as carrying a negative connotation," Judge Tu Hui-chin explained. He said the term "marred the reputation and dignity" of the teacher.

  ■ Technology

  Nanotechnology gets boost

  The Executive Yuan yesterday pledged to inject over NT$30 billion to help Taiwan become a leader of the world's nanotechnology industry and one of the world's design centers of integrated circuit chips within six years. Nanotechnology and chip design are two of the technology development programs included in the government's NT$2.6 trillion national development project. According to the press release made available by the Cabinet yesterday, the six-year nanotechnology project is two-phased and estimated to cost the government about NT$23 billion. Its major tasks will include cultivating nanotechnology talents and constructing nanotechnology research and development facilities. To develop Taiwan into a design center of silicon property, the Cabinet plans to invest about NT$7.6 billion between 2002 and 2005.

  ■ Government

  Lawmakers suggest cuts

  Eliminating legislators-at-large would be a good first step to reducing the number of seats in the Legislative Yuan and streamlining its operations, a group of independent lawmakers suggested yesterday. In a proposal crafted to reform the legislature, the newly formed non-partisan alliance said by getting rid of the legislator-at-large seats, which are named by political parties proportionally to ballots they garner in elections, the number of seats in the legislature would be cut to 184 from the current 225. Noting that legislators-at-large lack any mandate from voters nor have the expertise to supervise governmental affairs, the proposal said the seats have been used in the past by political parties as rewards to their financial donors.
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