Taiwan’s first conscripts since one-year compulsory military service was reinstated have begun their final evaluations to gauge their competency at the end of their eight weeks of orientation, the army said.
About 200 of the 655 conscripts in the army’s 2,226th conscription cohort on Monday completed their marksmanship evaluation with a pass rate of 95 percent, the 302nd Infantry Brigade was quoted as saying by the state-run Military News Agency.
The brigade, one of the two units stationed at the army’s boot camp in Taichung’s Chenggong Ling (成功嶺) military training camp, said that conscripts who successfully completed the evaluation with a score equal to or higher than the standard would qualify for a recurring NT$10,000 monthly bonus.
Photo courtesy of the Military News Agency
The five-day evaluation, which is being conducted this week, consists of a marksmanship test, a fitness test and three days of continuous combat drills, it said.
Conscripts who fail would take the test again next week, and those who fail again would receive remedial training, the brigade said.
Marksmanship accounts for 20 percent of a draftee’s grade, more than other evaluation criteria, it said.
The 90-second marksmanship test includes shooting at a target 175m away in an unsupported prone position with a T65K2 service rifle and 18 rounds of ammunition, the brigade said.
Participants need to reload three magazines and handle any malfunction that might occur, it said, adding that the test is structured to examine the draftee’s proficiency, accuracy and performance under pressure.
Taiwan last year restored one-year compulsory military service by presidential decree, requiring men aged 18 to 36 who are not students to serve after receiving eight weeks of training.
The policy change, which came amid increased hostility from Beijing, marked a shift from decades of planning to transform the military into an all-volunteer force.
In other news, Minister of the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics Chu Tzer-ming (朱澤民) yesterday told lawmakers that president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) plan to build seven submarines all at once is fiscally viable.
Construction of the nation’s first domestically made submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤), or “Narwhal,” was completed last year.
Chu made the comment after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) asked about the plan during a question-and-answer session at the Legislative Yuan.
Lai’s proposal would be a departure from President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) plan to build subs in batches of two to three units, which presumably was made to match Taiwan’s industrial and fiscal capabilities, Wang said.
The Hai Kun has not yet been put into operation, she said, adding that allowing more time to check for issues and collect funds would be a more prudent course of action.
Chu said there is “little difference” between building the submarines in one production run or several, and that Lai’s proposal would result in “only a slight increase” to the nation’s fiscal burden.
The changes in the timetable for submarine production would likely require the legislature to pass a special appropriations bill, he said.
Additional reporting by Chen Cheng-yu
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching