The government has established an intelligence-sharing channel with Europol through the UK to prevent terrorism during the Summer Universiade, which is to begin in Taipei on Saturday, a government official who asked to be unnamed said on Tuesday.
As an EU institution which China is not a member of, Europol is less susceptible to Beijing’s political pressure than Interpol, the official said.
Europol has standing ties with the Australian government, which for some time was under consideration as a possible intermediary for Taiwan and Europol’s intelligence-sharing collaboration during the Games, the official said.
Because Australia is not an EU member, routing anti-terrorism intelligence through Australia was believed to be the less politically sensitive option, the official said.
However, it was decided safety should take precedence over such considerations and the UK, which on June 3 was the site of a terrorist attack at London Bridge, was selected to fill the role, they said.
Taipei first asked for Interpol’s assistance, including intelligence-sharing and advisers to facilitate the process, the official said.
It was not anticipated that China would pressure Interpol into citing Beijing’s “one China” policy and demanding Taiwan seek help through Beijing, the official said.
In response, officials from agencies and ministries in March visited Europol in The Hague, the Netherlands to negotiate with the agency, they said.
The agencies included the Executive Yuan’s Office of Homeland Security, National Police Administration, Criminal Investigation Bureau and others, they said.
An agreement was hammered out by the parties involved under which Europol would share terrorism-related sensitive information via the UK, the official said.
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
RSS