■ Education
Reading festival continues
The Chengpin Reading Festival is in progress around the nation, with a large variety of activities underway, organizers said yesterday. Chengpin is a major bookstore chain viewed by some people in Taiwan as a "cultural arena." The topic of the annual festival is "a new vision of the world" and to present the topic, the bookstore has organized a series of activities, including concerts, dancing, film screenings and seminars, in addition to book exhibitions. The event will run until Aug. 21. The bookstore was slated to sponsor an outdoor concert in Taipei City today.
■ Diplomacy
Hsieh plans October tour
Prime Minister Frank Hsieh said (謝長廷) he plans to embark on a diplomatic tour in October and may make transit stops in Japan and the US. In the face of China's diplomatic embargo, Hsieh said he plans to visit one or more of Taiwan's diplomatic allies in October. However, he said, the itinerary has not yet been fleshed out. Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials said planning is already underway, with Paraguay the most likely destination. Paraguay is Taiwan's only diplomatic ally in South America. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is scheduled to visit Nicaragua in September to attend a biennial summit meeting with the heads of state of the ROC's Central American allies. Chen may also visit several allies in the Caribbean.
■ Diplomacy
Costa Rican leader to visit
President Abel Pacheco from Costa Rica, one of Taiwan's few diplomatic allies, is scheduled to visit the island next week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. Pacheco, accompanied by his wife, will lead a 14-member delegation on a six-day visit to Taiwan for the inauguration of the Democratic Pacific Union (DPU) founded by Taiwan's Vice-President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), the ministry said in a statement. Pacheco is expected to deliver a speech at the union's opening ceremony on Aug. 14 and ink a joint communique with his Taiwanese counterpart, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), it said. The DPU is an international NGO grouping some of Taiwan's diplomatic allies in Latin America and the Pacific with representatives from the US, Japan and Australia. It is committed to promoting democracy, peace and prosperity.
■ Education
Whiz kids challenge US
Four mental arithmetic youngsters from Taiwan will visit five cities in the US later this month to demonstrate how they can calculate even faster than an electronic calculator. Tseng Chun-chao (曾春兆), president of the Association of Chinese Childrens' Mental Arithmetic Development, said on Thursday that at the invitation of the National Education Association, he will lead the team of four youngsters aged between nine and 17 to visit Dallas, New York, Boston, Atlanta and Los Angeles from Aug. 19 to Aug. 28. The four youngsters will demonstrate their abilities in the hope of helping education officials in the US promote arithmetic. To impress their American spectators, Tseng said they welcome any American citizens between the ages of 9 and 100, using calculators, to challenge Liu Yu-ming (劉育名), a nine-year-old student. If they can beat him, Tseng promised NT$50,000 or a free 10-day trip to Taiwan. Liu, a second grader in an elementary school in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, is able to complete 23 calculations in less than three seconds.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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