A Republic of China (ROC) Navy vessel departed from Zuoying Naval Base yesterday to deliver relief supplies to the typhoon-ravaged Philippines.
It is due to arrive late on Thursday or early on Friday.
Manila Economic and Cultural Office Director Antonio Basilio said at a ceremony marking the shipment of relief supplies that his government and countrymen were very grateful for Taiwan’s assistance in Manila’s post-disaster relief and reconstruction efforts.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
The ship is delivering 552 tonnes of relief supplies and equipment, including canned fish, excavation machinery and prefabricated houses, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Shih (石定) said at the ceremony.
Among the items being shipped are 80 prefabricated houses donated by the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, which will be used to set up a “Taiwan village” in the disaster zone, Shih said, adding that the charity is expected to donate more prefabricated houses later.
The ship is being escorted on its 900 nautical mile (1,167km) voyage by the Lafayette-class Kangting frigate.
Having a warship escort a tank-landing craft on a cargo delivery mission is standard practice in the navy, but naval authorities said the frigate will not enter Cebu port when the Chung He docks to unload relief supplies.
The ROC Navy made frequent port calls in the Philippines before the two countries severed diplomatic ties in 1975. Military servicemen of the two countries resumed contacts in the 1990s, and an ROC Fleet of Friendship last made a port call at Subic Bay in November 2003.
Yesterday’s shipment followed the airlifting of more than 150 tonnes of relief goods to the Philippines via C-130 cargo planes over the past week in response to the devastation by Typhoon Haiyan on Nov. 8.
Meanwhile, Greater Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) yesterday said that he and department heads of the Taichung City Government had donated a day’s pay, totaling about NT$133,000, to support disaster relief efforts.
The city government’s Bureau of Labor Affairs has also launched a campaign to collect relief goods, including summer clothing, cool summer blankets and cooking utensils, for delivery to typhoon-battered zones in the Philippines, Hu 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:
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