■ 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.
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The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
RESPONSE: The government would investigate incidents of Taiwanese entertainers in China promoting CCP propaganda online in contravention of the law, the source said Taiwanese entertainers living in China who are found to have contravened cross-strait regulations or collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be subject to fines, a source said on Sunday. Several Taiwanese entertainers have posted on the social media platform Sina Weibo saying that Taiwan “must be returned” to China, and sharing news articles from Chinese state media. In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asked the Ministry of Culture to investigate whether the entertainers had contravened any laws, and asked for them to be questioned upon their return to Taiwan, an official familiar with the matter said. To curb repeated
Myanmar has turned down an offer of assistance from Taiwanese search-and-rescue teams after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck the nation on Friday last week, saying other international aid is sufficient, the National Fire Agency said yesterday. More than 1,700 have been killed and 3,400 injured in the quake that struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay early on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock. Worldwide, 13 international search-and-rescue teams have been deployed, with another 13 teams mobilizing, the agency said. Taiwan’s search-and-rescue teams were on standby, but have since been told to stand down, as
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