Taiwan does not intend to move its representative office in Israel from Tel Aviv, although it acknowledges Jerusalem as the capital, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.
The ministry is keeping a close watch on developments in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that the US now formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and plans to relocate its embassy there, ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) told a regular media briefing.
The ministry’s Web site lists Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, he said
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
“We acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” he said. “However, at present, we are not considering moving Taiwan’s representative office from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”
Meanwhile, the ministry is calling on Israel and the Palestinian territories to settle their conflict by peaceful means and seek a mutually acceptable peace proposal that would serve the best interests of their people, Lee said.
The Palestinian National Authority has declared “three days of rage,” from Wednesday until today, during which protests are expected to be held in Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, Lee said, adding that Taiwanese traveling or doing business there are advised to avoid crowded places.
The ministry has instructed the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Tel Aviv and other offices to issue advisories to nationals abroad to raise awareness of the situation, Lee said.
Senior judges yesterday met to discuss the constitutionality of a law that makes adultery a criminal offense, before being ordered by Judicial Yuan President Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) to set a date for a constitutional interpretation within the next month. The judges met to discuss Article 239 of the Criminal Code on offenses against marriage and family, after 18 judges had called for a constitutional interpretation of the issue. Taipei District Court Judge Lin Meng-huang (林孟皇) said that while he had previously tried adultery cases and never questioned the law, his feelings changed when trying a case last year involving baseball star Wang
Instead of hating the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), help change it, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said, as he urged young people to join efforts to reform the party. As the nation marked Youth Day on Sunday, Chiang said in a Facebook post that he wanted to remind people that “the KMT used to be very young.” Now, when people think of the KMT, they equate it with older people, he wrote. “Even if [the KMT] is a 100-year-old party, it must maintain a young mentality, and understand what young people want and what they want the KMT to do,” Chiang wrote.
TOO TIRED: Investigators found that the pilot’s lack of alertness could be attributed to a lack of sleep the previous night, when he had slept with his child It was a copilot’s inappropriate operation of the aircraft and the pilot’s insufficient alertness that led to a hard landing of a China Airlines cargo flight on Dec. 13, 2018, the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board said yesterday. Flight CI6844, a Boeing 747-409 which departed from Hong Kong International Airport, landed on the pre-threshold area of runway L5 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, about 21m before the head of the runway, an investigation report said. The hard landing damaged three runway lights, but none of the personnel on board sustained any injuries, the report said. When approaching the runway, the copilot failed to maintain
DISTRUST WARRANTED? The WHO is under China’s control and has become a useless organization, while data from China cannot be trusted, a Control Yuan member said China’s demand that the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, Hubei Province, not be referred to with names like the “Wuhan pneumonia” betrays its lack of confidence in itself, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told lawmakers yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) asked Su, during a interpellation at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, for his view on China’s attempts to redeem its national image in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included China’s efforts to “bleach” its image, including having WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus publicly praise its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, and thanking it for buying time
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