The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday raised the travel alert for Belgium to yellow, meaning that tourists should pay particular attention to their safety and evaluate if a trip to the country is necessary.
The Taipei Representative Office in the EU and Belgium also said that Taiwanese students, expatriates and businesspeople should be wary when traveling in Belgium and Luxembourg. They advised travelers heading to Brussels to avoid locations where large groups gather, including shopping centers, large rally grounds, airports and train stations.
Taiwanese expatriates in Belgium can call 32-475-472-515 for emergency assistance, the ministry said.
In related news, Tessa Ko (柯彩雲), who manages European tours at a local travel agency, said there has been a decline in the number of people inquiring about trips to France after the Paris attacks, adding that tour groups that happened to be in Paris on Nov. 14 and Nov. 15 were indeed affected, because all of the museums in the city were closed.
However, as most museums in Paris reopened on Monday last week, the majority of Taiwanese with scheduled trips to the city have chosen to go ahead with their tours.
The Belgian capital was yesterday locked down for a second day, with police and troops on the streets as the authorities hunted for several suspects linked to the Paris attacks.
Belgian officials were due to meet later yesterday to decide whether to extend the security alert in Brussels, imposed over fears extremists were plotting similar strikes to the attacks in Paris, which left 130 people dead on Nov. 13.
The city’s metro system and public buildings were closed on Saturday, with shops and restaurants following suit after the terror alert was raised to the highest level of four because of what officials said was an “imminent threat.” Central Brussels, usually bustling on a Saturday evening, was virtually deserted, with police and troops on patrol.
Belgian Minister of the Interior Jan Jambon said authorities were looking for more suspects, not just Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, who managed to slip past French security forces after the carnage in the City of Light.
He warned that the capture of Abdeslam, a Belgian-born 26-year-old whose brother blew himself up at a cafe in Paris, would not in itself end the threat.
“It involves several suspects and that is why we have put in place such exceptional measures,” the Belga news agency cited Jambon as telling Flemish TV.
“We are following the situation minute by minute... there is a real threat, but we are doing everything possible day and night to face up to this situation,” he said.
Meanwhile a Turkish Airlines airplane flying from New York to Istanbul, Turkey, with 256 people on board was yesterday diverted to Canada because of a bomb threat, police said.
In Turkey, police arrested a Belgian of Moroccan origin in the resort city of Antalya, the site of last week’s G20 summit, along with two other suspects, probably Syrians.
Ahmet Dahmani, 26, reportedly scouted out targets for the Paris attacks.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS