President-elect Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) office apologized yesterday over the seating arrangements for Tuesday's presidential inauguration ceremony, adding that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) would be attending the ceremony.
Ma’s office offered the apology yesterday in response to Wu’s alleged discontent after he was originally given a seat in a section behind foreign guests and government officials.
A report in the Chinese-language United Daily News said that Wu was furious over the seating arrangements and had initially said he would not attend the ceremony.
Ma spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said that the seating had been arranged jointly by the Presidential Office and Ma’s office, and that it was customary to seat foreign guests, Presidential Office officials, incoming Cabinet members and legislators at the front in the “VIP zone.”
Chairmen of political parties and guests from civil groups were usually seated in the second VIP zone, Wang said.
Ma and vice president-elect Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) acknowledged that such seating arrangements were inappropriate and asked the preparatory team to seat the KMT chairman in the front row in appreciation of Wu’s contributions during the presidential election.
“Chairman Wu will be the ruling party chairman after the inauguration and should be treated with great respect,” Wang said yesterday outside KMT headquarters.
“We apologize for any carelessness during the preparatory process and hope everyone will forgive our negligence and attend the inauguration ceremony in high spirits,” he said.
Ma and Siew will complete the transfer of power at the Presidential Office with President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on Tuesday morning before heading to the inauguration ceremony at Taipei Arena.
The president-elect and foreign guests will then take the Taiwan High Speed Rail to Kaohsiung, where the inauguration banquet and a fireworks display will take place, Wang said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
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