The University of St Thomas (UST) in Houston, Texas, on Wednesday last week launched a Mandarin Center in cooperation with Kaohsiung-based Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, which would facilitate exchanges between Taiwanese and US teachers, as well as offer US students opportunities to study in Taiwan.
The center is the first of its kind in US, UST said.
The two schools have had sister-school ties for more than a decade and in September decided to establish the center, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Houston said, adding that it had helped facilitate donations from US-based Taiwanese.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Houston
The center’s commencement ceremony was presided over by UST dean Richard Ludwick and UST global studies director Hans Stockton, who heads the center.
Economic office Director-General Robert Lo (羅復文), E&M Foundation founder Don Wang (王敦正), UST board member Rocky Lai (賴賢烈), and Texas Mandarin Teachers’ Association members represented Taiwan at the event.
Wenzao University president Margret Chen (陳美華) and other members of the Kaohsiung school were also present via teleconference, while a prerecorded message by Ministry of Education Department of International and Cross-strait Education Director Lee Yen-yi (李彥儀) was played at the event.
Stockton said that the center would offer courses that benefit experts as well as local residents.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has