The official in charge of Taiwan's athletics affairs said on Tuesday that he is trying to drum up support from European countries for Taiwan's bid to host the 2011 World University Games.
Chen Chuan-shou (陳全壽), minister of the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports under the Executive Yuan, made the remarks during a visit to Zurich, Switzerland.
Chen said that he talked with Leonz Eder, a Swiss member of the Executive Committee of the Brussels-based International University Sport Federation (FISU), who is considered friendly toward Taiwan.
The host city of the 2011 University Games will be decided by the committee's 23 members by 2007.
Besides Switzerland, Chen will also visit Britain, France and the Netherlands to meet with other FISU committee members.
According to Chen, the main purpose of his European trip is to lay a foundation and consolidate friendship with members of the FISU Executive Committee rather than discuss with them the details of the island's bid for the 2011 games.
Noting that more than 10,000 athletes from 160 countries participated in the last World University Games held in Daegu, South Korea, in 2003 and that the scale of the event is larger than that of the World Games -- which Kaohsiung City will host in 2009 -- Chen said that trying to get the right to host the World University Games is a tough job.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods