■ Diplomacy
Salvadoran group arrives
The vice president of El Salvador's National Assembly, Jose Manuel Melgar, is to arrive in Taipei today for a five-day visit. Heading a 19-member parliamentarian delegation, Melgar will call on Legislative Yuan President Wang Jin-pyng, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the office of Taiwan's International Cooperation and Development Fund, and the Central American Trade Office. The Salvadoran delegation is also scheduled to visit several economic and cultural establishments in Taiwan, including an agricultural research center in Taoyuan run by the Council of Agriculture, a vocational training center operated by the Taipei City Government, as well as the Taipei World Trade Center and the National Palace Museum.
■ Education
University leaders meet
The 2003 Southeast Asian University Presidents' Conference opened yesterday in Taipei. Over 100 university presidents from Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Khmer, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Taiwan participate in the two-day meeting. The theme of the meeting is "globalized cooperation" in higher education. The participants have signed a joint statement, saying that they hope to have more opportunities to exchange professors and students, jointly sponsor international conferences, jointly carry out research programs, and exchange educational information and publications.. Kao Chiang(高強), president of the National Cheng Kung University which hosts the conference, said the two-day meeting is aimed at promoting the cooperation among Southeast Asian universities.
■ Trade
Protect IPR, Paal says
The de facto US ambassador to Taiwan said yesterday that Taiwan must further strengthen intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in order to attract more foreign investors and boost the development of knowledge-based economy. Douglas Paal, director of the Taipei Office of the American Institute in Taiwan, made the remarks at an Asia-Pacific conference of the World Trade Law Association. Paal said effective IPR protection is critical to Taiwan's drive to develop a knowledge-based economy. Noting that direct foreign investments in Taiwan have declined significantly in the past two years, Paal said, Taiwan must cultivate a more "IPR-friendly" environment to enhance its appeal to foreign investors. Paal said the package of amendments to Taiwan's copyrights law, which was passed in June this year, were a compromise under pressure from some lawmakers. Paal said Taiwan must further amend its copyright law again to plug holes in its IPR protection mechanism.
■ Politics
Hsieh to attend forum
Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) will head a delegation to attend an annual Liberal International conference to be held in the West African state of Senegal next week, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday. Liberal International is a London-based organization that groups more than 80 liberal democratic parties in 63 countries around the world. The DPP formally joined the alliance last year. Hsieh, a member of the DPP's decision-making Central Standing Committee, will attend the meeting on behalf of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Several DPP politicians and Kaohsiung City Government officials, will accompany Hsieh.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
President William Lai (賴清德) today called for greater mutual aid between Taiwan and Japan in a post commemorating the 15th anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, saying that “true friendship reveals itself in hardship.” The magnitude 9 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in Japan, and the ensuing tsunami left 18,500 people dead or unaccounted for, and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. It was the world's worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Japan and Taiwan share a close bond built on mutual aid and trust, Lai said on Facebook, adding that he hopes they would
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