The Sports Administration yesterday denied that it has any intention of bidding for the 2024 Olympic Games, adding that it is helping New Taipei City bid for the 2023 Asian Games.
The US Olympic Committee has been meeting in Boston to discuss possible cities to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. A report from WCVB-TV, an ABC-affiliated television station in Boston, said on Tuesday that Boston is likely to submit a bid for the 2024 Olympics along with Dallas, Los Angeles, Rome and Taipei.
In response, Sports Administration Director-General Ho Jow-fei (何卓飛) said that the administration is assisting New Taipei City with its bid for the 2023 Asian Games and the nation has no plans to bid for the 2024 Olympics because the Games are only a year apart.
Taipei City Department of Sports Commissioner Ho Chin-liang (何金梁) said that the capital’s top priority is to make sure the 2017 Summer Universiade is successful.
“We don’t have any plans nor have we received instructions from the central government [about the 2024 Olympics Games],” Ho Chin-liang said.
The Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee also denied having received such information, adding that a bid for such a large sports event would require inter-departmental coordination and that there would need to be a committee.
Though WCVB-TV failed to mention the source of its information, a bid for the 2024 Olympics was mentioned by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) during a TV debate on Dec. 17, 2011, ahead of the presidential election.
“The nation has just secured the right to host the Summer Universiade, which is second only to the Olympics. We can now start training teenagers so that they have a chance to fight for gold medals in 2017,” Ma said in the debate. “With the experience of the Summer Universiade as the basis, our next goal would be [to host] the 2024 Olympic Games. Five countries who have held the Summer Universiade in the past have also held the Olympics, including the US and China.”
However, the idea of hosting the Olympics was dismissed by his opponent, People First Party presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜).
“Taiwan has hosted many sports events before and you can’t say that they were not important, but a good manager must prioritize the allocation of resources and pay more attention to the nation’s economy,” Soong said.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese