The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday that Denmark has become the ninth European country to recognize Taiwanese driver’s licenses.
Anne Hung (洪慧珠), director-general of the Department of European Affairs, made the announcement at a regular press briefing. The regulation took effect on July 1.
“Denmark, which terminated earlier privileges for ROC [Republic of China] citizens in 2007 because of EU regulations, decided recently to reinstate the treatment. This is a result of the efforts of our representative office in Denmark,” Hung said.
Hung said nine European countries have reciprocal recognition of Taiwanese driver’s licenses — Denmark, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Hungary and Finland.
Meanwhile, Hung called on the public to pay special attention to personal safety while traveling abroad, saying that a Taiwanese national was in a coma after a rafting accident on July 17 in Bern, Switzerland.
Declining to give more details about the person, Hung said that after being notified by Swiss police, the ministry’s representative office in Geneva informed the victim’s family and helped them obtain Swiss visas to fly immediately to Switzerland.
In related news, a Europe-Taiwan youth summer program sponsored by the ministry is scheduled to open next week to promote interaction between young people.
Hung said the program had been flooded with applications from young Europeans.
“MOFA hopes that through this activity, young people in Europe will haver an occasion to learn more about Taiwan, while it will help us create more connections in Europe,” Hung said.
She said the exchange program consisted of workshops from next Tuesday to Aug. 10 and from Aug. 18 through Aug. 31, with each attended by more than 70 people from Europe and Africa.
The group will participate in a variety of activities with Taiwanese youth and will visit government agencies, cultural sites and other tourist destinations, Hung said.
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:
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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