DIPLOMACY
US lawmakers to meet Ma
Two members of the US House of Representatives said they will meet with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) during a transit stop in New York City on his way to Paraguay later this month. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce and the committee’s ranking member, Representative Eliot Engel, said they planned to go to New York for the meeting. Royce, a Republican who led a bipartisan delegation to Taiwan early this year, said he hopes to visit again next year to discuss trade and investment issues, while Engel, a Democrat, said he hopes to continue to improve bilateral relations. Ma is scheduled to visit Paraguay and four Caribbean allies from Aug. 11 to Aug. 22.
DIPLOMACY
New AIT official starts job
Joseph Bookbinder has assumed duties as the head of the American Institute in Taiwan’s (AIT) Public Diplomacy Section, the institute said in a statement yesterday. Bookbinder took up his new post on Thursday, following former section head Sheila Paskman’s return to the US for a new posting, it said. A Foreign Service officer for 21 years, Bookbinder’s most recent overseas assignment was head of the Public Diplomacy Section at the US consulate in Hong Kong from 2009 to last year, during which time he worked on various press, cultural and education programs, the statement said. He has also served in New Dehli, India, and Chengdu and Beijing in China. His most recent domestic posting was as an assessor with the Board of Examiners from last year to this year, it added. Bookbinder, a Long Island native, holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard University, the AIT said.
EDUCATION
Center in India opens
A Taiwanese educational program at a state-funded university in India to help promote Chinese language-learning has opened. Speaking at the opening ceremony on Thursday, S.M. Sajid, president of Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, said he was grateful for Taiwan’s help in providing language teachers, because India does not have enough teachers who can teach Chinese. The education center, which teaches traditional Chinese characters, can better showcase the beauty and essence of Chinese culture, Representative to India James Tien (田中光) said. The Ministry of Education has designated National Tsing Hua University to promote higher education exchanges in India. Six other Taiwanese have been posted to two other centers in India to teach Chinese, at O.P. Jindal Global University Haryana state and at Amity University in Uttar Pradesh.
SOCIETY
Party planned for panda
The female panda born on July 6 at Taipei Zoo will be one month old on Tuesday, and to celebrate, the zoo yesterday said it will throw a two-hour party tomorrow. The zoo will also launch a contest to formally name the cub, which is now known as “Rice Meatball” (圓仔). The cub was the result of four years of artificial insemination attempts between Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), the pandas given to Taiwan by China in 2008. Zoo officials said the cub is thriving and now weighs 1.054kg. In Chinese culture, there is traditionally a celebration for a baby’s first month. Zoo officials said its other newborns will also be included in the party: a male white rhinoceros born on Feb. 2, five raccoons born on March 23 and a siamang born on July 3. The party will take place between 10am and noon, the zoo said.
HEALTH
Drinking habits revealed
As many as 95 percent of junior-high students consume at least one sugary drink a day and 55.2 percent have two a day, according to a government survey released yesterday. The survey, conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Health Promotion Administration, asked 6,273 junior-high students how many carbonated or other sugary drinks they had during a 30-day period last year. A small number of those polled, 3.8 percent, said they had more than five sugary beverages each day. More boys had two or more sugary drinks a day than girls, the survey showed. Just 5.4 percent of respondents said they stay away from sugary beverages in favor of water. The agency highlighted the high calorie counts in popular beverages, pointing out that a 700ml cup of pearl milk tea can contain up to 550 calories — the equivalent of 28 cubes of sugar.
SOCIETY
Missing daughter found
Police in Taoyuan County said on Thursday that they had reunited a daughter with her parents thanks to clues left by invoice receipts in a lost wallet. Police said an officer in Jhongli City (中壢), Shen Yi-chang (沈怡昌), used the ID card left in a wallet to identify and contact the parents of the wallet’s owner. The parents, who live in New Taipei City (新北市), said their daughter had gone missing six months ago and they had created a Web site in an effort to find her, police said. Moved by their story, Shen opened an investigation into the daughter’s disappearance and discovered that many of the receipts in the wallet were issued by a convenience store in Jhongli. After reviewing surveillance footage and finding a receipt with a license plate number, Shen managed to locate the daughter, bringing the family together for the first time in six months.
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
Taiwan is to extend its visa-waiver program for Philippine passport holders for another year, starting on Aug. 1, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said on Friday. Lin made the announcement during a reception in Taipei marking the 127th anniversary of Philippine independence and the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The decision reflected Taiwan’s commitment to deepening exchanges with the Philippines, the statement cited Lin as saying, adding that it was a key partner under the New Southbound Policy launched in 2016. Lin also expressed hope
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
Temperatures in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) climbed past 37°C yesterday, as the Central Weather Administration (CWA) issued heat alerts for 16 municipalities, warning the public of intense heat expected across Taiwan. The hottest location in Taiwan was in Sindian, where the mercury reached 37.5°C at about 2pm, according to CWA data. Taipei’s Shilin District (士林) recorded a temperature of 37.4°C at noon, Taitung County’s Jinfeng Township (金峰) at 12:50 pm logged a temperature of 37.4°C and Miaoli County’s Toufen Township (頭份) reached 36.7°C at 11:40am, the CWA said. The weather agency yesterday issued a yellow level information notice for Taipei, New
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