President Chen Shui-bian's (
Huang yesterday announced Chen's itinerary for the 12-day trip, confirming that Chen would transit in the US and not Japan. He said that Chen would stop over in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday.
Because southern states of the US have been busy with disaster relief measures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Chen will not meet with Florida Governor Jeb Bush during his two-day stay there, Huang said.
PHOTO: SUNG CHIH-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
However, Chen will receive an award from the US Congress honoring his long-time devotion to the promotion of human rights, Huang said.
Because of China's recent attempts to set up diplomatic relations with Guatemala, which has had diplomatic ties with Taiwan for more than seven decades, Chen will visit Guatemalan President Oscar Berger on Thursday and sign a Taiwan-Guatemala free-trade agreement.
In addition, Chen will follow up on commitments in a communique signed last month, when Berger was in Taipei for the inaugural conference of the Democratic Pacific Union (DPU).
Immediately after the DPU conference, Taiwanese officials led six civil aviation companies to Guatemala to explore opportunities for future collaboration.
Huang said that one other key mission of Chen's trip is to attend the Fifth Summit of the Republic of China (ROC) and Central America, to be held on Sept. 26 in Nicaragua. Huang said that Chen will visit the Dominican Republic prior to the summit.
Officials will also have talks with Dominican officials. In addition, the two sides will form teams for a game of softball. Taiwan's team will be named "Hungyeh" (Red Leaf) after the team of Bunun Aboriginal elementary schoolchildren who beat the then-Little League World Champions, Japan, 7-0 in an invitation game in Taipei in 1968.
"We will keep the spirit of the Hungyeh team in our minds as we expand Taiwan's diplomatic space," Huang said.
After the summit, Chen will visit Caribbean diplomatic allies Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Kitts and Nevis. According to Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Hwang (
Apart from representatives from the Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union, businesspeople with interests in the region will join the delegation.
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater