A five-member parliamentary delegation from Austria’s lower house, or National Council, arrived in Taiwan yesterday for a five-day visit, making them the first group of lawmakers from Austria to visit the nation since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
During their stay until Sunday, the delegates, led by Carmen Jeitler-Cincelli, are to meet with Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫?) and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Roy Lee (李純), the ministry said in a statement.
They are also due to visit the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Digital Affairs, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a government-funded think tank, United Microelectronics Corp, a leading contract chipmaker, and the Taipei Computer Association, it said.
Photo courtesy of MOFA
The group is also expected to visit the Taiwan Equality Campaign, a coalition of non-governmental organizations promoting women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as the National Human Rights Museum, it added.
The other members of the delegation are parliamentarians Andreas Minnich, Peter Weidinger, Corinna Scharzenberger and Fiona Fiedler.
The National Council is one of two houses of the Austrian parliament and is frequently referred to as the lower house.
Photo: AP
The Federal Council is the upper house of the Austrian parliament and represents the nine Austrian states at the federal level.
Meanwhile, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer concluded a two-day visit to Taiwan earlier this week, making her the first sitting governor of the US state to visit the nation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Whitmer and her delegation arrived in Taiwan on Monday and were welcomed by Lee at a dinner at the ministry in Taipei on Monday night.
In his address during the dinner, Lee welcomed Whitmer’s visit, saying that the trip would help both sides continue to enhance their multifaced partnership, particularly in terms of education, trade and technology.
Taiwan and Michigan signed a memorandum of understanding in May that aims to boost economic investment, supply-chain resiliency, technology and innovation collaborations, and industry-academic connections, Lee said.
The governor, a Democrat, wrote on X that her brief Taipei trip was meant to give her an insight into the nation’s semiconductor industry.
“In 2021, Michigan’s automotive assembly lines came to a halt because overseas manufacturers couldn’t produce semiconductor chips,” she wrote. “That’s why I went to Taiwan — a major semiconductor chip hub in the world — to bring manufacturing back to Michigan so that never happens again.”
Neither the ministry nor Whitmer provided more details on the itinerary of the trip, which concluded on Tuesday.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS