■ EDUCATION
Ministry warns on drugs
The Ministry of Education expressed concern yesterday over what it said is a worrying trend of drug abuse among younger students, including some in elementary school. In the past, drug abuse had mainly been found among students with more pocket money, but the problem had now spread to those from disadvantaged families without pocket money, said Wang Fu-lin (王福林), head of the ministry’s Department of Military Training Education. The ministry’s findings revealed that poorer students were gaining access to the substances through unemployed parents with a drug habit, Wang said.
■ DIPLOMACY
Medics head for rural India
An 11-member medical team from Taiwan left New Delhi on Monday to provide free treatment to poor inhabitants of remote areas in the Indian states of West Bengal and Sikkim. The team is composed of medical doctors and staff from the International Cooperation and Development Fund — an organization affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that oversees Taiwan’s overseas development programs — and five hospitals. The team, carrying more than US$10,000 in medicine, is on a 10-day trip to the tribes and villages in the mountainous region wedged between Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and the North Bengal Plains of India.
■ ECONOMY
3C voucher show held
The Taipei Computer Association is organizing an exhibition at the Taipei World Trade Center from tomorrow until Monday to boost the sale of so-called 3C consumer electronics products through voucher spending. The association said the exhibition would offer good deals to consumers who purchase products with their government consumer vouchers.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi