Premier Su Tseng-chang (
"Initially, we will be considering encouraging local enterprises to sponsor or own professional baseball teams with tax breaks. In addition, we are also considering having a sports lottery," said Su when approached by reporters for comment yesterday.
Su was referring to the rumor that the La New Bears, which won this year's Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) championship, will be sold off because of financial difficulties.
The CPBL has been suffering from severe financial problems for years.
During the 17 seasons since the CPBL's inception, four teams have been either dissolved or sold to other owners because of funding issues.
Currently, six teams are still surviving but none of them is making a profit and only two have survived all 17 seasons.
Although approximately NT$80 million (US$2.4 million) was lost this season, Liu Pao-yu (劉保佑), the owner of the La New Bears, said he would not abandon the team.
Liu issued a press release on Friday and explained that some earlier comments he had made were misinterpreted by the public to suggest that he intended to sell the team. He emphasized that he has no intention of doing so but he would welcome "all kinds of financial support or cooperation" to maintain the team.
Su said baseball is one of the most popular sports in Taiwan, and that more and more people are becoming interested in it because of New York Yankee pitcher Wang Chien-ming (
Wang is a role model for Taiwanese, Su said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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