China is ready to allow the Olympic flame to blaze a trail across Taiwan ahead of the 2008 Games in Beijing, organizers were quoted as saying yesterday.
"Based on information we've got from Taiwan, most of the Taiwan people hope the Olympic torch can come to the island," said Jiang Xiaoyu (蔣效愚), executive vice president of the Beijing Olympic organizing committee.
"We will take their hopes into careful consideration while drafting the route," he told the China Daily.
Earlier this year, organizing committee president Liu Qi (劉淇) said the "domestic" torch relay route for the Games should include not only Taiwan but Hong Kong and Macau.
The final draft of the Olympic torch relay route will be submitted to the International Olympic Committee for approval at the end of this year, the report said.
Jiang said he hoped to see many Taiwanese involved in the Olympics as volunteers, and called on Taiwanese companies to consider sponsorship.
"Before and during the 2008 Olympic Games, altogether 100,000 volunteers will be needed. We hope to see many Taiwan people serving the Beijing Games," he said. "We hope Taiwan companies will become the sponsors of the Games and share the business opportunities offered by it."
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS