Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) said yesterday that his city wants to seek the right to host the 13th Youth World Baseball Championship (YWBC) after the championship series was canceled because the Taiwan team was refused visas to enter Venezuela, the host country.
The Switzerland-based International Baseball Federation (IBAF) canceled the Caracas tournament on Tuesday after the host country succumbed to pressure from China to refuse to grant visas to the Taiwanese baseballers. The tournament was originally scheduled to open today.
Hu said that canceling an international championship on the eve of its opening is a serious matter and that such a situation has never happened since the YWBC's first tournament was held in Japan in 1989.
The shambles in Venezuela reflects the universal principle that "politics should not affect sports," Hu said, expressing his appreciation for the IBAF's just handling of the situation.
Speaking about the central city's desire to host the 13th YWBC, which will be postponed for 12 months while the IBAF finds another venue for the tournament, Hu said Taichung is on the IBAF's priority list of possible host cities, after his city hosted the IBAF Intercontinental Cup tournament last year.
Japan and South Korea have also expressed their interest in hosting the international youth event.
Hu said August was not a good month to hold the tournament in Taiwan because of the hot weather, suggesting the IBAF hold the competition during the winter.
The mayor also said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should grant visas to the Venezuelan team should it be invited to attend the games if they are held in Taiwan, reiterating his call for no political interference in sport.
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:
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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