The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) hopes to formally open its representative offices in Sapporo, Japan, and Istanbul, Turkey, before the summer holiday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) said yesterday.
Ou said the ministry was working on budgeting and staffing plans for the new offices. He said between two and three more months would be required to complete the necessary arrangements, adding that the governments of Japan and Turkey had given the green light for Taiwan to open the liaison offices.
Staffing levels at the two offices would be determined based on the number of Taiwanese tourists who travel to the two cities, he said, adding that the Sapporo office would be staffed by four or five officials while the Istanbul office would have two or three.
Ou said that the idea to open new offices stemmed from frequent people-to-people exchanges between Taiwan and the two countries.
EL SALVADOR
Ou also commented on Taiwan’s ties with El Salvador, which recently elected a president from a party with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, leading to speculation that the Central American country could cut ties with Taiwan.
Ou, who recently concluded a visit to San Salvador, said Salvadoran president-elect Mauricio Funes welcomed President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to attend at his inauguration on June 1.
In an interview with the Central News Agency, Ou said the ministry was making arrangements for Ma to lead a delegation to the ceremony. Ministry spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said the ministry had yet to receive a final decision from the Presidential Office regarding the trip.
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