CULTURE
Paris Taiwan center opens
France’s second Taiwan Center for Mandarin Learning opened in Paris on Saturday, and is to promote Taiwanese culture and Taiwanese-style Mandarin learning in the country. The center was inaugurated at L’Encrier Chinois, a Chinese-language school that opened in 2005. Representative to France Francois Wu (吳志中) and Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) Deputy Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) attended the opening ceremony. Hsu said the center, founded by Taipei, serves as a platform for French to learn about Taiwanese culture and democracy. OCAC began opening Mandarin language centers in September last year. Today, 45 centers have been established around the world, including 35 in the US, two each in France, Germany and the UK, and one each in Austria, Hungary, Ireland and Sweden, it said. France’s first center opened at the Association Linguistique et Culturelle Chinoise in September last year.
CRIME
Police nab fugitive teacher
A former elementary-school teacher from Tainan, who was last year convicted of sexually assaulting one of his students, was arrested in Taichung on Saturday afternoon, after being on the most wanted list for more than two months, the Tainan City Police Department said. Chang Po-sheng (張博勝), fired in 2019 after being accused of sexual assault by the student’s mother, had been wanted since Jan. 26, after he failed to hand himself over to the authorities to start serving his prison sentence, police said. Chang was sentenced to four years and 10 months in prison. The ruling was final after his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court on Nov. 4 last year. Tainan police began to search for Chang after the prosecutors’ office issued a warrant for his arrest on Jan. 26.
SOCIETY
Boat sinks, killing two
The bodies of two men were recovered on Saturday after a cargo boat sank off Keelung, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said. The Tung Yang No. 6 sank about 0.2 nautical miles (370m) south of Keelung Islet, with its two Taiwanese crew members, surnamed Wu (吳) and Lin (林), trapped on board, the CGA said. Wu and Lin had no signs of life when their bodies were recovered by the crew of a leisure fishing boat and Keelung Islet security staff, the CGA said, adding that they were pronounced dead shortly after being rushed to hospital. The CGA said it believes the boat sank because of flaws in its drainage system, which caused the vessel to take on water.
SOCIETY
New hospital for Hsinchu
Government officials on Saturday unveiled a plaque for a children’s hospital in Hsinchu City. It is the first local government-initiated hospital to be built based on the build-operate-transfer model in Taiwan, Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) said. It involved the coordination of the local government, which provided the land, funds invested by Mackay Memorial Hospital and a construction firm, Lin added. The Hsinchu Municipal Mackay Children’s Hospital is to have 32 pediatric sub-specialty divisions, including acute care, rare diseases, obstetrics and gynecology, when it officially opens on Sept. 1. The hospital would enable children in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli, where there is no medical center, to receive the best possible care, as it is classified as a medical center — the highest level on Taiwan’s four-tier classification of medical facilities based on medical equipment.
STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: China would not blockade Taiwan, because President Xi respects him, and Russia would not have invaded if he were president, he said Former US president and the Republican candidate in next month’s presidential election Donald Trump said he would impose additional tariffs on China if China were to “go into Taiwan,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150 percent to 200 percent,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with the WSJ published on Friday. Asked if he would use military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China, Trump said it would not come to that because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) respected
HACKERS’ MARKET: Chat logs about Taiwan and documents outlining ways to take over online accounts were leaked from a company that sells data from hacks Taiwanese cybersecurity specialists found 577 leaked documents which show that the Chinese Communist Party is engaging in “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, a documentary released last month by Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed. The filmmakers behind Tracking China’s Leaked Documents said they spent six months visiting seven countries, including Taiwan, where they interviewed members of TeamT5, a malware research and cybersecurity firm, which found the leaked documents. TeamT5 said they discovered a string of mysterious URLs on the social media platform X, which they suspected could be accounts created by hackers or people who leaked data, which led
The Taipei Department of Transportation discouraged YouBike 2.0E users from taking them on long-distance trips after a Taipei city councilor said that riders often use the new electric bike, YouBike 2.0E, to climb Yangmingshan (陽明山). Taipei earlier this year began offering the first 30 minutes of YouBike 2.0 rentals for free, with Taipei and New Taipei offering the YouBike 2.0E on Aug. 30 to encourage rider usage. For YouBike 2.0, the rate is NT$10 per 30 minutes within the first four hours, NT$20 per 30 minutes for five to eight hours and NT$40 per 30 minutes after eight hours. Meanwhile, for e-bikes,
RESOURCE RICH: Taiwan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and has up to 30 gigawatts of the potential energy, of which 10 gigawatts could be economically viable Academia Sinica and CPC Corp yesterday began drilling the nation’s first deep geothermal well in Yilan County’s Yuanshan Township (員山). The 4km-deep well is expected to take 18 months to complete and has an estimated investment of NT$337 million (US$10.54 million), Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said. “While Taiwan has up to 30 gigawatts of potential deep geothermal energy, with an estimated 10 gigawatts being economically viable, only by digging wells can we determine the actual amount of commercially viable geothermal energy,” Liao said at the project’s opening ceremony. Data collected during and after the excavation process would be used for future