Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) agreed yesterday that Taipei will host next year's Asian Network of Major Cities (ANMC) meeting early next year to compensate for the cancelation of this year's event.
This year's meeting, originally scheduled to be held in Beijing, has been canceled because of difficulties in relocating the forum after Beijing's abrupt withdrawal as this year's host.
The annual ANMC meeting usually takes place in November.
Because of the cancelation of this year's meeting, Ishihara asked Ma to bring forward the time of next year's summit.
EARLIER DATE
Ma said that Taipei "accepted the proposal with pleasure" and that the meeting would be held sometime in March or April.
"Time constraints are the biggest concern over Taipei hosting the ANMC this year. Mr. Ishihara and I reached have agreed to move next year's ANMC forward to March or April, and the city government will budget for the event," Ma said after his meeting with Ishihara.
The ANMC secretariat will hold a meeting in Tokyo to confirm yesterday's decision.
Ma's meeting with Ishihara lasted about an hour yesterday morning at Taipei City Hall. Swamped by reporters after the talk, Ishihara said nothing as he left the building.
NO POLITICS
In response to President Chen Shui-bian's (
He said the central government should not politicize the issue.
"We will focus our efforts on preparing for next year's ANMC, and Taipei City will be more than happy to invite Beijing and Shanghai to the event," he said.
Taipei launched its bid to host this year's ANMC meeting in July of last year.
LAST MINUTE STUNTS
Beijing entered the race against Taipei only a few days before last year's annual meeting in Jakarta. Beijing was granted the right to host this year's meeting, while Taipei earned the right to host next year's event.
Beijing protested the outcome at the time. However, it was not until last Tuesday that Beijing officials announced that they were pulling out of the deal.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not