International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach yesterday said he welcomes Taiwan’s participation in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under the name “Chinese Taipei” after a referendum in Taiwan to apply for a name change was rejected.
Bach made the comment before attending an IOC Executive Board meeting after being asked about his reaction to the result of the referendum, which asked: “Do you agree that the nation should apply under the name of ‘Taiwan’ for all international sporting events, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics?”
About 55 percent of voters, or 5.77 million, opposed the name change, while 45 percent, or 4.76 million supported it.
Taiwan has taken part in all editions of the Olympic Games under the name “Chinese Taipei” since 1984 after China refused to allow Taiwan to participate officially as the Republic of China (ROC) in the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal.
The nation had competed in the Olympic Games from 1956 to 1972 as the ROC, but it did not take part in the 1976 and 1980 Olympics because of disputes over protocol and national recognition.
Taiwan first participated as “Chinese Taipei” at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo after the IOC passed the Nagoya Resolution in 1979, which led to the Lausanne Agreement in 1981.
The agreement requires Taiwan to compete under the name “Chinese Taipei” and bans its Olympic committee from using the ROC flag or national anthem.
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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