The annual debate of the 69th session of the UN General Assembly concluded on Tuesday, during which 16 of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies spoke out for the country, the same number as last year.
Taiwan should be allowed to participate in UN specialized organizations, said the heads of state, high-ranking government officials and representatives from the allies during the assembly, which began on Sept. 24.
The international organizations include the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the WHO, they said, recognizing the contributions Taiwan has already made.
Belizean Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilfred Elrington said on Tuesday that his country has benefited from Taiwan’s help and urged that Taipei be permitted to participate in the specialized agencies.
“In this modern day and age, it is incomprehensible that we should want to deny ourselves the benefit of their [Taiwan’s] expertise in dealing with global issues,” Elrington said.
Solomon Islands permanent representative to the UN Collin Beck cited the 45 million passengers who passed through Taiwan in 2012 as a reason to include the country in the ICAO.
“We just do not have the luxury of time to turn a blind eye to needed cooperation. The global challenges before us are too big for narrow interests to take a wait and see approach, and keep postponing needed action,” Beck said.
Beck described Taiwan as the 27th-largest economy in the world with “experience, technology and capability that our shared agenda can benefit from.”
“We have all to gain and nothing to lose by inviting the Republic of China [to become the] 195th member of the UNFCCC, 192nd member of ICAO and the 195th member of WHO,” Beck said, according to a UN transcript of the speech.
Among others who spoke for Taiwan were Saint Lucia Minister of External Affairs Alva Baptiste, Nicaraguan Minister of Foreign Affairs Samuel Santos Lopez and Paraguayan permanent representative to the UN Jose Antonio Dos Santos.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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