Guatemala's business association on Friday said it supported the country's ties with Taipei and hoped the plans of a Taiwanese company to help build an oil refinery in Guatemala would come to fruition.
Carlos Zuniga, president of the Guatemalan business association, said he believed relations with Taiwan would not stop Guatemala from making some inroads into the Chinese market, which he acknowledged was "much larger in terms of population."
Zuniga said he believed Costa Rica's decision last month to break its relations of more than 60 years with Taiwan in favor of China was a "mistake," adding that Taiwan had remained a "friend" of Guatemala's even through the most difficult times.
Vice President Annette Lu (
She said that the company would soon be sending its own delegation to Guatemala to evaluate the feasibility of such a project.
Zuniga said he hoped the company would follow through on the idea, though the company has not officially said it will invest in the project.
"I don't know anything about it, so I cannot comment," a spokesman said on Friday.
Lu returned home early yesterday from a three-nation Latin American tour.
Lu's trip took her to the Dominican Republic, Paraguay and Guatemala, with transit stops in Panama and the US cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Lu told reporters upon her arrival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport that she had received the highest level of courtesy from the nation's diplomatic allies and a warm welcome from their people and journalists, and from Taiwanese expatriates.
Lu said that the visit provided her with the opportunity to have in-depth discussions with the leaders of the countries, an experience she called meaningful.
Lu said she was given reassurances from Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte Frutos, Guatemalan President Oscar Berger Perdomo and Panamanian Vice President Samuel Lewis Navarro that their countries' relations with Taipei were stable.
The leaders also promised to offer their support for Taiwan in the international arena whenever necessary, she said.
Lu said that while in the Dominican Republic and Paraguay, she toured industrial parks established with aid from Taiwan, and discussed with Guatemalan leaders a cooperation project to set up an international trade zone there.
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
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
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