The Dalai Lama expressed condolences to the families of the victims of two recent disasters in Taiwan.
“I was heartbroken when I was informed of the Kaohsiung blasts and an earlier plane crash in Penghu. I have been to Taiwan and Kaohsiung and I remember the people’s kindness and piety,” the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said in a letter written in Mandarin.
“I have never forgotten you in my heart and I will continue to pray for you,” said the Dalai Lama, who started a spiritual retreat on July 25 and learned of the two incidents via his aides on Aug. 2.
Tsegyam Ngaba, secretary-general of the Dalai Lama’s office, said on Saturday that the letter had been delivered to Taipei’s Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Friday afternoon.
When the Dalai Lama learned of the incidents, he became “serious and solemn and clasped his hands in devout prayer,” Ngaba said.
The Tibetan spiritual leader visited Taiwan in 2009 after Typhoon Morakot caused massive flooding and landslides that killed about 700 people.
Asked about the possibility of another visit to Taiwan, Ngaba said the Dalai Lama had not received any invitations and that the spiritual leader will have a tight schedule starting later this month once the retreat is over.
Forty-eight people were killed and 10 injured when TransAsia Airways Flight 222 crashed near Magong Airport in Penghu on July 23, while 30 people were killed and 310 injured in a series of deadly gas explosions in Kaohsiung on July 31 and Aug. 1.
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