A former editor-in-chief of an English-language daily newspaper in Taiwan will join three seasoned diplomats today to be sworn into their new posts either overseas or at the foreign ministry.
Rex Wang (
Wang, former executive director of the Asia Foundation, majored in law at the National Taiwan University before gaining his master's degree in political science from National Chengchi University. He completed his graduate studies in labor studies in Brussels.
Wang has vowed to improve ties between Switzerland and Taiwan once he takes up his new post in Bern.
Wang was unable to comment on his new post when contacted yesterday.
Three seasoned diplomats are also slated to be sworn in for their respective new posts during the ceremony this afternoon.
Victor Chin (
Lo Yu-chung (
Joseph Kuo (
Meanwhile, DPP Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) took part in the three-day "Strengthening Indonesian Political Parties Conference" in Jakarta yesterday, according to a press release.
Hsiao is scheduled to give a talk on "Political Parties in a Democracy" this morning, while Shaw Yu-ming (
Shaw was the former deputy secretary-general of the KMT.
The international conference saw the gathering of political party leaders and scholars from the region, as well as parliamentarians from the Philippines, Taiwan, Mongolia and Malaysia.
The swearing in for the four positions comes three days after Premier Yu Shyi-kun told an inter-governmental meeting entitled "Task Force on Foreign Affairs" that he planned to increase the proportion of high-ranking officials with expertise in areas other than foreign affairs to lead Taiwan's representative offices abroad.
On Tuesday, the Cabinet's spokesman said that people should not take the premier's comments as referring to only staff with expertise in trade and economics, saying that Yu was talking about people with experience "across the board."
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
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