Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said on Saturday that Taiwan’s 23 million people should not be excluded from important international organizations such as the UN.
Speaking at a luncheon that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) hosted for Taiwanese expatriates in Nicaragua, Ortega reiterated his country’s friendship with Taiwan and its determination to support Taiwan’s efforts to be integrated into the international community.
Ortega’s friendly words came a day after he failed to welcome Ma at the airport or attend a state banquet, raising speculation of tensions between the two countries.
After apologizing to Ma earlier on Saturday for his absences, Ortega said that based on solid ties between the two countries, Nicaragua and Taiwan will bolster bilateral exchanges, particularly in the fields of trade, agriculture and education.
He welcomed Ma’s proposal, made earlier in the day, to have Nicaraguan students pursue advanced studies in Taiwan, and Nicaraguans to receive vocational training in Taiwan.
“This is a very good way to strengthen cultural exchanges between the two countries,” Ortega said.
He also praised Ma’s “modus vivendi” diplomatic approach and “diplomatic truce” concept in dealing with China, saying it had resulted in improved cross-strait relations and contributed to regional stability.
He also lauded the contributions that Taiwanese expatriates have made to Nicaragua. He said that ethnic Chinese immigrants in Nicaragua, whether from Taiwan or China, are all Nicaraguan citizens and have all made valuable contributions to Nicaragua’s development.
Ma and his entourage arrived in Managua on Friday for a two-day visit — the second leg of his two-country Central American tour after Panama.
Ma is scheduled to return to Taiwan today after a stopover in Hawaii.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching