Two former prime ministers of Japan and Estonia are to address the annual Indo-Pacific security forum when it opens in Taipei tomorrow, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
The keynote speeches are to be delivered by Taro Aso, a senior member of the Japanese Diet who served as prime minister from 2008 to 2009, and Andrus Ansip, a member of the European Parliament and former prime minister of Estonia from 2014 to 2019, the ministry said in a news release.
The one-day Ketagalan Forum, organized by think tanks along with the government, is to focus on regional and global security issues, with current and former officials, academics and experts from various countries discussing traditional and nontraditional threats and challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, it said.
This year’s forum is divided into three panels focused on the challenges in cross-strait and global security, the effects of information warfare on democracy and Taiwan’s role in the reconstruction of the international supply chain, the ministry said.
The guests are to include Japanese lawmaker Keisuke Suzuki and former US diplomat Daniel Russel, who specialized in East Asian affairs and is now vice president for international security and diplomacy at the US-based Asia Society Policy Institute.
In total, 14 lawmakers, former government officials and academics from 12 countries are to attend the forum, including Lithuanian lawmaker Vilius Semeska; Admiral Karambir Singh, former Indian Chief of Naval Staff and current chairman of the India-based think tank National Maritime Foundation; and Isaac Ben-Israel, an Israeli military scientist who founded Tel-Aviv University’s Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security.
The Ketagalan Forum: Asia Pacific Security Dialogue is being held fully in person this year for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic started three years ago.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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