Vice President Annette Lu (
World leaders and some 100 foreign delegations are scheduled to attend Friday's inauguration ceremony of Paraguay's President-elect Nicanor Duarte.
On the eve of the inauguration ceremony, the vice president received a warm welcome at the banquet.
PHOTO: TZOU JIING-WEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Besides Castro presidents Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada of Bolivia, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Ricardo Lagos of Chile, Lucio Gutierrez of Ecuador, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Spanish King Juan Carlos were also in attendence.
Lu told the media that Castro was surprised to hear that she had been imprisoned for six years. She said that the Cuban leader repeatedly emphasized his anti-war stance during their conversation, and hoped that the conflicts between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait can be resolved peacefully.
Lu said she invited Castro to visit Taiwan during the banquet, hoping that he can "make a contribution to cross-strait peace."
Castro, now in power for almost 45 years, turned 77 earlier this week. As the longest-ruling head of government, the aging leader has built a communist state in the US' backyard.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell wished Castro a happy birthday on Wednesday, saying that he should have marked the occasion by retiring.
"It's time for him to go," Powell said in an interview with the Univision Spanish-language television network.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,