International Ombudsman Institute (IOI) president Chris Field on Monday was awarded the First Grade Control Yuan Medal at a ceremony at the Control Yuan in Taipei.
Control Yuan President Chen Chu (陳菊), who presented the medal, said it was to honor Field for his long-term commitment and contributions toward Australia's domestic and international supervisory affairs.
Photo: Yang Cheng-yu, Taipei Times
The Control Yuan and the Ombudsman Western Australia (OWA) are both Australasia and Pacific members of the IOI, and as such are both committed to promoting good governance and the protection of human rights in the region, Chu said.
Field, who became head of the OWA in 2007, entered his fourth term in the role last year, and was awarded the Australian Public Service Medal in February this year.
In his speech after receiving the medal, Field discussed the OWA’s evolution, and its current role in supporting the Human Rights Commissioner of the Ukrainian Parliament, the Haitian ombudsman in its fight against criminal violence, and its assistance to refugees, and in funding Pakistan’s watchdog in combating malnutrition, among other efforts.
Field is to visit the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, as well as Hakka and indigenous communities to learn about the development of human-rights protections in Taiwan, and to explore possibilities for deepened exchanges with Australia, he 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