The Tai-Ex opened down 50-points this morning from Friday's close, at 22,818

on turnover of 5.7-billion N-T.

The market lost over 500 points on Friday - as investors reacted to

lackluster performances by tech stocks on Wall Street last week - which

dragged down Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

President Lai Ching-te has been stressing the value of democracy for Taiwan

during his address at the D-P-P's national congress in Taipei.

Speaking at the event, Lai touted the theme for the congress this year as

being "democratic Taiwan moving forward in unity" and proposed three main

targets for the party.

Those targets include establishing a national identity based on Taiwan

subjectivity .. the strengthening of the democratic constitutional system and

to ensure (確保) human rights and freedom are safeguarded.

The D-P-P also elected the party's central standing committee members,

central executive committee members and central evaluation committee members

during the national congress.

The National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung says it's compensated 17

students who had their food stolen by Formosan macaques during confrontations

(衝突) on campus.

The compensation payments are part of a six-month campaign by the school to

promote what it's calling "human-monkey coexistence."

The campaign runs from February 1 through July 31.

According to a university spokesperson, it's given up to 100 N-T to each

victim, most of whom were attacked and lost their food in areas near

convenience stores or parking lots.

In order to be eligible for the payments, students have to provide food

receipts and photos of the monkeys.

At least two people have been killed in Ukrainian strikes on the partly

Russian-occupied Donetsk region, Russian state media say, while Russian

strikes wounded (使…受傷) at least five people in Ukraine overnight.

Karen Chammas reports.

Bangladesh’s top court has scaled back a controversial quota system for

government job applicants after it led to nationwide unrest and deadly

clashes between police and protesters.

The Supreme Court in its verdict (判決) ordered 93% of the government jobs to

be called on a merit-based system, with only 5% reserved for relatives of

veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971 and other

categories.

Earlier, the system reserved 30% of the jobs for veterans' relatives.

Sunday’s verdict comes after weeks of demonstrations that turned deadly this

week.

Authorities haven’t shared any official numbers of those killed, but local

media have reported over 100 dead.

Greenland police have arrested a prominent environmental activist and

anti-whaling campaigner on an international arrest warrant issued by Japan.

Police said they arrested Paul Watson when his ship docked in Greenland’s

capital Nuuk on Sunday morning.

They said Watson will be brought before a district court with a request to

detain him until a decision is made on whether to extradite (引渡) him to

Japan.

Watson is a Canadian-American citizen and he's a former head of the Sea

Shepherd Conservation Society.

Watson's direct action tactics include high-seas confrontations with whaling

vessels.

Japan has accused Watson and Sea Shepherd of endangering whalers’ lives

during operations in the Antarctic Ocean.

That was the I.C.R.T. news,

Check in again tomorrow for our simplified version of the news, uploaded

every day in the afternoon.

Enjoy the rest of your day, I'm _____.

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