A group of foreign ambassadors and representatives to Taiwan and their family members yesterday completed a two-day trip to Penghu arranged by Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) to promote the nation’s tourism and deepen foreigners’ understanding of Taiwan.
The trip was attended by ambassadors from 10 of the nation’s 18 diplomatic allies, as well as representatives of 22 nations with which Taiwan does not have formal ties, including Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic, France, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, India, Israel, Nigeria, Japan and South Korea, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Penghu was chosen as the destination due to its unique marine ecology and basalt formations, the ministry said in a news release on Friday.
Photo: CNA
Penghu, located 24km from Taiwan proper, was skipped only in 2011 by Lonely Planet in its top 10 paradise islands list, and is a favorite domestic tourism destination, the ministry said.
“We also hope to increase Penghu’s international profile through the trip,” it added.
The itinerary for the two-day trip included the island’s White Bay, the traditional Erkan (二崁) village, the Daguoye (大?葉) columnar basalt cliffs and Hujing Islet (虎井嶼).
The village, which was in 2001 the first to be designated by the government as a traditional settlement, dates to the end of the Ming Dynasty, when a man named Chen Yan-yi (陳延益) came to Penghu from Kinmen, the Penghu National Scenic Area Administration said on its Web site.
Chen’s family, who became fishers, began to grow and the area gradually developed into a village in the 1820s, the Web site said.
In March, the ministry arranged a similar trip to Hualien County for foreign diplomats in Taiwan, it said, adding that it would continue to organize similar trips to promote tourism.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS