■APEC
Women leaders attend meet
A Taiwanese delegation has arrived in Thailand to attend the APEC forum's 8th Women Leaders' Network Meeting scheduled to open in the northern city of Chiang Mai today. The 12-member delegation is headed by Lin Fang-mei (林芳玫), chairwoman of the National Youth Commission. About 350 delegates representing government, business, academic and non-profit sectors from 20 APEC economic entities are taking part in the meeting dubbed: Women Make a World of Difference: Partnerships for Gender and Development. Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Chinnawat is scheduled to address the opening ceremony, which will be followed by split-panel discussions focusing on three sub-themes, featuring knowledge and empowerment, security for women and women entrepreneurship.
■ SARS
Singapore donates gear
Singapore has donated two thermal imaging scanners to help identify SARS sufferers and two ventilators to Taiwan, a government agency said yesterday. Ho Ching (何晶), executive director of Temasek Holdings, the investment arm of the Singapore government, presented the machines to Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Ling-San (林陵三) in Taipei, it said in statement. "This latest contribution to Taiwan by the Temasek Group of Companies follows earlier contributions to China -- Beijing and Shanghai -- and Indonesia," Temasek said. "This forms of part of the Temasek Holdings Group's ongoing efforts to forge closer relationships with other Asian economies, and represents the commitment of the Temasek Group of Companies towards enhancing the economic prosperity of the region."
■ Barcelona games
Police win five golds
Taiwanese police officers demonstrated their shooting prowess Tuesday at the 2003 World Police and Fire Games in Barcelona, Spain, National Police Administration (NPA) officials said yesterday.
Chinese Taipei grabbed five more gold medals, all in shooting competitions, on the third day of the biennial games for the world's law enforcement and fire-fighting professionals being held July 27 to Aug 3.
In the men's group rifle competition, police officers Su Chung-suo (蘇崇碩), Lee Tung-hui (李同輝), Tsai Ming-wang (蔡明王) and Liu Chin-yuan (劉晉遠) each won a gold medal by finishing with a combined score of 2,193 points, beating their Spanish counterparts by a narrow 4 points and leaving the defending champion Malaysian team a distant 28 points behind. Meanwhile, officer Lee Tung-hui bagged another gold medal in the men's individual rifle shooting competition, with a total score of 584 points.
■ APEC
APEC holds Incubator Forum
APEC opened its first Incubator Forum in Taipei yesterday, which will be attended by representatives from 21 APEC member economies through Aug. 1. The forum, the first large-scale international conference to be held in Taiwan since the outbreak of SARS in mid-March, serves as a platform for exchanges among APEC members and has elicited a positive response from the participants, who will discuss issues related to strategy, policy and international cooperation centered on the theme of "Business Incubation in the New Century." Taiwan is slated to hold the second APEC Incubator Forum next year.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) is to launch a new program to encourage international students to stay in Taiwan and explore job opportunities here after graduation, Deputy Minister of Education Yeh Ping-cheng (葉丙成) said on Friday. The government would provide full scholarships for international students to further their studies for two years in Taiwan, so those who want to pursue a master’s degree can consider applying for the program, he said. The fields included are science, technology, engineering, mathematics, semiconductors and finance, Yeh added. The program, called “Intense 2+2,” would also assist international students who completed the two years of further studies in
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) departed for Europe on Friday night, with planned stops in Lithuania and Denmark. Tsai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Friday night, but did not speak to reporters before departing. Tsai wrote on social media later that the purpose of the trip was to reaffirm the commitment of Taiwanese to working with democratic allies to promote regional security and stability, upholding freedom and democracy, and defending their homeland. She also expressed hope that through joint efforts, Taiwan and Europe would continue to be partners building up economic resilience on the global stage. The former president was to first
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
MORE NEEDED: Recall drives against legislators in Miaoli’s two districts and Hsinchu’s second district were still a few thousand signatures short of the second-stage threshold Campaigners aiming to recall Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday said they expect success in 30 out of 35 districts where drives have passed the second-stage threshold, which would mark a record number of recall votes held at once. Hsinchu County recall campaigners yesterday announced that they reached the second-stage threshold in the recall effort against Legislator Lin Szu-ming (林思銘). A total of 26,414 signatures have been gathered over the past two months, surpassing the 10 percent threshold of 23,287 in Hsinchu County’s second electoral district, chief campaigner Hsieh Ting-ting (謝婷婷) said. “Our target is to gather an additional 1,500 signatures to reach
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