EDUCATION
India seeks Chinese teachers
India plans to recruit up to 10,000 teachers from Taiwan to meet growing demand for Chinese language classes, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. Indian Minister of Human Resources Kapil Sibal made the proposal during a meeting with Minister of Education Wu Ching-ji (吳清基) in India last week, an education official said. Sibal said there was a strong demand for Chinese teachers, as about 10,000 Indian high schools currently offer Chinese classes, or plan to do so, the official added. Taipei will set up a taskforce to train India-bound teachers and hold more talks with New Delhi on the teaching program before the end of this year, she said. India’s Education Ministry could not be immediately reached for comment. Taiwan has previously supplied Chinese language teachers to France, the US and Vietnam, the education ministry said.
FOOD
Food security meeting held
A conference aimed at developing solutions to the nation’s “food deficit” and new approaches to food security opened yesterday in Taipei. The two-day “National Food Security Conference” brought together nearly 100 experts and professionals from the private and public sectors and academia, to discuss how to respond to what has become a global challenge. Borrowing a phrase coined by Josette Sheeran from the World Food Programme, Deputy Premier Sean Chen (陳?) opened the conference by comparing the food crisis to a “silent tsunami.” Chen said the government was taking the issue very seriously, promising to study opinions and proposals offered at the conference. Organized by the Council of Agriculture, the conference will focus on five main issues, including increasing domestic production, boosting international investment and cooperation, risk management and providing a safe and stable supply of water for irrigation.
WEATHER
Temperatures reach 35.5oC
The Central Weather Bureau yesterday reported that the temperature in Taipei hit 35.5oC yesterday, the highest temperature recorded so far this year, and follows Monday’s high of 35.1oC. Meanwhile, the circumfluence of Tropical Storm Aere mainly affected Hualien, Taitung and the Hengchun Peninsula, increasing the chances of rain in those areas, the bureau said. Conditions on the west coast were relatively stable because of descending air currents. The bureau also lifted its sea warning at 5:30pm as the storm moved away from Taiwan. Temperatures on the west coast were expected to drop as well, it said.
SOCIETY
Sand theft sentence upheld
The High Court’s Greater Tainan branch office overturned a not-guilty verdict in a sand-stealing case against city councilor Wu Chien-pao (吳健保) yesterday, ruling that he must serve a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence. Wu and former city councilor Lee Chuan-fu (李全富) were charged with the illegal removal of sand from the Tsengwen River (曾文溪) after using questionable methods to win a contract to dredge the river in 2004. Wu and 25 others were indicted in August 2004 on charges of bribing officials, breaking government procurement laws and colluding to steal public assets. In August 2008, the Tainan District Court found Wu not guilty of the charges, but sentenced Lee to two years, a sentence that was later commuted to one year.
NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom has taken to social media to urge Jeremy Lin (林書豪) to “stand with Taiwan” and stop taking “dirty Chinese Communist Party money.” “Haven’t you had enough of that Dirty Chinese Communist Party money feeding you to stay silent?” Freedom wrote on Facebook and Twitter on Sunday. The 29-year-old Boston Celtics center, who took a new surname when he became a US citizen on Monday last week, urged Lin: “Stand with Taiwan! Stop bowing to money & the Dictatorship.” Lin, a US citizen of Taiwanese descent who last year obtained a Taiwanese passport, has not responded to Freedom. Lin is
PAST CATCHING UP: Raphael Lin was last year convicted of intimidating his girlfriend at the time, and in 2015 allegedly confined his parents and assaulted his mother Doctoral student and media commentator Raphael Lin (林秉樞) is in detention and has had his communication rights limited after he was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly subjecting Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Kao Chia-yu (高嘉瑜) to two days of violence in a hotel room, the New Taipei District Court said yesterday. The New Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office had filed a request to detain Lin — who was Kao’s boyfriend at the time of the incident — with the court approving the request early yesterday. The prosecutors’ office said that it is likely to charge Lin with seven offenses: assault causing bodily harm, violating
A COVID-19 vaccine trial carried out in Taiwan has found that a combination of the AstraZeneca and the locally developed Medigen vaccines is more effective than two doses of AstraZeneca, the research team said on Saturday. The trial, which was initiated by Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, examined 100 people aged 22 to 62 divided into two groups: One group was vaccinated with two AstraZeneca doses, while the other received a first dose of AstraZeneca and a second dose of Medigen, team leader Chen Chih-jung (陳志榮) said. The geometric mean titers (GMTs) of neutralizing antibodies in the mix-and-match group after 10 days were
Toads are a symbol of prosperity and good fortune in Taiwan, but the unexpected discovery of an invasive species has officials and environmentalists scrambling to contain their spread. With flashlights in hand and shielded by protective gloves, dozens of volunteers from the Taiwan Amphibian Conservation Society worked through the night searching rice fields and vegetable plots for their quarry — the cane toad. There should be no reason for these large and highly toxic amphibians to exist in Caotun (草屯), a township in the foothills of the central mountain range. Cane toads are indigenous to South and Central America, and while they have
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