■ ENVIRONMENT
Kaohsiung to mark Earth Day
Kaohsiung City Government chiefs will ride bicycles to work tomorrow to mark Earth Day, the city government said yesterday. Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said city government officials may also take public transportation to work tomorrow to set a good example for residents to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The city government will also turn off lights and shut down elevators between 12pm and 1pm as part of its Earth Day efforts, she said. "The move to mark [Earth Day] is symbolic," she said, adding that she would also encourage city government officials to have light meals or become vegetarians. The city government said it planned to replace all light bulbs in city government offices with energy-saving ones within three years and to turn off lights in city government buildings between 1pm and 1:30pm every day.
■ ENVIRONMENTt
Academics make vow
Nearly 100 academics and experts from home and abroad signed a declaration vowing to commit themselves to environmental conservation at an environmental forum in Tainan. The declaration, signed by participants to the two-day "2008 Jade Mountain Forum on Sustainable Environment," will be read on World Earth Day tomorrow at the summit of Yushan by staff members of the Sustainable Environment Research Center of National Cheng Kung University, the host of the forum. Yushan, which is 3,952m tall, is the highest peak in Taiwan. The declaration - written in Chinese, English and Japanese - states that environmental sustainability is a global challenge faced by all nations and that the signees, environmental protection advocates from the Pacific region, are duty-bound to promote environmental protection.
■ EDUCATION
Academicians list announced
Academia Sinica, the country's top research institution, has announced its list of academician candidates for this year, with 47 outstanding scholars nominated for the prestigious honor. A maximum of 30 candidates will be elected by incumbent academicians in a vote scheduled for early July, the academy said in a statement. Twenty-six of the candidates, or 55 percent of the total, are foreign-based and the remaining 21 are based in Taiwan the statement said. Only five of the nominees are female, and 14 were previously nominated but failed to be elected. Academia Sinica academicians are grouped into three divisions - mathematics and physical sciences, life sciences and humanities, and social sciences. A maximum of 10 new academicians can be elected to each of the three divisions at each biennial election. The academicians are full members of the academy and make up the Convocation of Academia Sinica, which formulates academic research policies. The title of academician is an honorary lifetime privilege.
■ LITERATURE
'Absinthe' wins prize
Chih Yen (知言), a National Taiwan University graduate student, has won first prize for mystery writing for her novel Absinthe in a competition sponsored by the Mystery Writers of Taiwan. She is the first female to take top honors. Chih was awarded NT$50,000 and a trophy on Saturday at the seventh annual conference of the Mystery Writers of Taiwan after defeating three competitors from Hong Kong in the final round. The contest received a total of 36 submissions from domestic and overseas competitors. After the award ceremony, Chih thanked her family.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
Prosecutors today declined to say who was questioned regarding alleged forgery on petitions to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, after Chinese-language media earlier reported that members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Youth League were brought in for questioning. The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau confirmed that two people had been questioned, but did not disclose any further information about the ongoing investigation. KMT Youth League members Lee Hsiao-liang (李孝亮) and Liu Szu-yin (劉思吟) — who are leading the effort to recall DPP caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and Legislator Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) — both posted on Facebook saying: “I
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), who led efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), was released on bail of NT$80,000 today amid outcry over his decision to wear a Nazi armband to questioning the night before. Sung arrived at the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office for questioning in a recall petition forgery case last night wearing a red armband bearing a swastika, carrying a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and giving a Nazi salute. Sung left the building at 1:15am without the armband and covering the book with his coat. Lee said today that this is a serious
A mountain blaze that broke out yesterday morning in Yangmingshan National Park was put out after five hours, following multi agency efforts involving dozens of fire trucks and helicopter water drops. The fire might have been sparked by an air quality sensor operated by the National Center for High-Performance Computing, one of the national-level laboratories under the National Applied Research Laboratories, Yangmingshan National Park Headquarters said. The Taipei City Fire Department said the fire, which broke out at about 11am yesterday near the mountainous Xiaoyoukeng (小油坑) Recreation Area was extinguished at 4:32pm. It had initially dispatched 72 personnel in four command vehicles, 16
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