President Chen Shui-bian (
"We will ask our International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Wu Ching-kuo (吳經國) to assist [the federation's] request," Chen said while receiving the federation's president Choue Chung-won at the Presidential Office yesterday. "We will also seek more international forums for our taekwondo athletes to display their talents."
The number of sports to be a part of the 2012 Olympic Games is currently limited to 28. The martial art of taekwondo, along with baseball, softball and the modern pentathlon, is rumored to be on the list of sports that may be chopped from the official Olympic program.
The fate of these sports will be decided tomorrow when IOC members meet in Singapore. Aside from reviewing the selection of sports for the 2012 Olympics, the IOC members will also choose the host city for the games.
Chen told Choue that taekwondo is one of the sports that Taiwan is promoting, and noted that Taiwanese athletes won two gold and three bronze medals when the sport was first featured in the Olympics in 1988 as a demonstration sport.
At the Olympic Games last year in Athens, Taiwan's taekwondo athletes were able to compete with those from other countries in a fair environment thanks to Choue's insistence on good and impartial referees, Chen said. Taiwanese athletes Chen Shih-hsin (
Praising Choue for his push for more accuracy and fairness in taekwondo scoring by setting up a committee to reform the competition system and introducing the use of electronic scoring devices, Chen said he believes these measures will win the approval of all 125 IOC members and allow the sport to be included in the 2012 Olympics.
Chen also expressed hope that Choue will continue to boost taekwondo exchanges between the South Korea and Taiwan.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
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