Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on Friday began a weeklong private visit to India, a country which she described as having an ancient civilization “worth visiting to understand better.”
There is considerable opportunity for future interaction between Taiwan and India in the area of “soft power,” Lu said at Delhi International Airport upon her arrival on Friday night.
“In recent years, there has been a breakthrough in Taiwan-India relations. It’s a good thing,” she said, without elaborating.
According to Taiwan’s representative office in India, trade relations with India have grown steadily in recent years, with two-way trade surging to US$7.5 billion last year from US$6.4 billion in 2010 and US$4.1 billion in 2009.
Taiwan’s largest integrated steelmaker, China Steel Corp, decided last week to invest US$178 million in an electrical steel plant in Gujarat’s Bharuch District. The new project will bring Taiwan’s total investment in India to more than US$1.2 billion, the office said.
Lu, accompanied by friends and a close aide, flew to New Delhi on Friday. Asked by the press whether she would meet the Dalai Lama during her stay, she said she would love to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader, whom she described as an old friend.
She added, however, that she was afraid that it would be inappropriate to arrange a meeting at the last moment.
The Dalai Lama is in Delhi for a regular eye checkup.
Asked about the defeat of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the Jan. 14 presidential election, Lu said she hoped the party would organize a series of discussions after the Lunar New Year holiday to review why it lost.
“Party members should open their hearts to discuss what had caused the defeat,” Lu said.
Lu will travel to Utta Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi before returning to Taiwan on Saturday.
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