Three Taiwanese who were trekking through a valley in Nepal’s Langtang National Park when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit the region called Taiwan’s representative office in New Delhi, India, on Wednesday afternoon to say that they were safe.
Chang Kui-chen (張桂真) told the office that she and Chen Yen-chun (陳彥君), Chen Yu-chin (陳玉琴) and their British friend Michael Tandy were initially stranded at Langtang Village — about 130km north of Kathmandu — but were airlifted out along with 70 other tourists by Indian military helicopters on Wednesday.
Chen said on Facebook that for four days they were trapped in the 3,500m-high village, which had been hit by an avalanche, with little food or firewood. Chang expressed gratitude to Taiwan’s representative office in India for its efforts to locate and seek help for them.
The office is Taiwan’s nearest governmental agency to Kathmandu.
Meanwhile, although the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said there are still six Taiwanese unaccounted for in Nepal, a Taiwanese familiar with Nepalese affairs on Thursday said on Facebook that three of them were safe.
Ruby Chien (簡如邠), a writer who has visited the Himalayan country on numerous occasions said on Facebook that three of the six listed by the ministry as unaccounted for were safe.
Chien said that two of them, including a backpacker surnamed Tsai and a volunteer worker surnamed Wang, had already returned to Taiwan.
Chien said that their families in Taiwan confirmed their safety in response to requests posted by her on Facebook for information on their whereabouts.
The third, surnamed Hsian, who went to Nepal for religious training, is currently on a spiritual retreat, Chien said.
Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Deputy Director-General Chen Lung-jin (陳龍錦) said at a news conference on Thursday morning that the ministry has set up four centers in Nepal to provide emergency aid, and two of its officials were in the nation in the company of a seven-member team organized by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to assess the medical assistance needed by Nepal.
According to the latest information from the ministry, it has received requests to locate 248 Taiwanese, 246 of whom have been confirmed safe as of 1pm on Friday.
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
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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