■ Civic groups
MOI to revise rules
The Ministry of the Interior is planning to ease the requirements to charter national civic groups. The ministry will revise the Regulations for Registration of Social Entities (社會團體許可立案作業規定) with regard to the management of civic groups. The overhaul is expected to delete the requirement of including cities with the status of a special municipality. The stipulations covering founding members' household registration will be changed from 11 different areas to seven, and those seven locations could just be the counties and cities where the members work. Another regulation, which stipulates that a group that wishes to apply as a city or county-wide civic group needs the household registrations of its founding members to be located in more than half of a city or a county's villages and townships, is also expected to be dropped.
■ Culture
Nobel winner in Taoyuan
West Indian dramatist and poet Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for literature, was scheduled to appear at a colloquium at Yuan Ze University in Taoyuan yesterday afternoon. Walcott, who is also a painter and a professor at a number of prestigious universities in the US, was expected to have a "transcultural dialogue" with Far East Group Chairman Tony Hsu and several renowned writers in Taiwan, including Chen Juo-hsi, at the colloquium. Walcott's writings are rich in cultural nuance, employing such topics as racial issues, identity and alienation of cultures, as well as the position of languages. Walcott, who skillfully fuses folk island culture with the classical and avant-garde in his poems, could be an encouragement to Taiwan's literary circles at a time when Taiwan is enthusiastically promoting maritime culture, said a spokesman for the Kaohsiung City Government, which invited Walcott to Taiwan to take part in the 2005 World Poetry Festival in Kaohsiung.
■ Transit
MRT contract awarded
Taipei Rapid Transit Corp yesterday announced it had contracted Continental Engineering Corp (大陸工程) to construct a 2.7km-long section of the MRT's Hsinyi Line (信義線) Construction will be launched next month, at the earliest. The MRT company said that if they can contract out another section on the Hsinyi line by March this year, the 6.4km-long Hsinyi line will be completed by 2011. Once complete, the west-east line will cut the traveling time between Taipei Main Station and Taipei 101 or the World Trade Center to 11 minutes. Continental Engineering Corp, which won the NT$8.74 billion contract, said that the section starts at the Hsinyi-Yungkang intersection and ends at Hsinyi-Anhe intersection. The section will run through Daan Station on the Muzha Line while another station will be established at Ta-an Forest Park.
■ Health
Officials receive awards
At the Department of Health's 34th anniversary yesterday, Minister of Health Hou Sheng-mou (侯勝茂) presented the Minister Award to former minister Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) and former director-general of the Center for Disease Control, Su Ih-jen (蘇益仁), for their dedication to health promotion during their term. Hou lauded Chen for launching the reform of the National Health Insurance, saying that Chen has helped enhance the quality of medical service by establishing family doctor and referral systems. Su, meanwhile, was honored for establishing a hospital reporting network to fight SARS, thereby laying the groundwork for flu prevention.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
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