The government has extended its appreciation to Japan, the US and China for their generosity in the wake of the magnitude 6.4 earthquake that struck southern Taiwan early on Saturday, killing at least 41 people.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday thanked Japan for pledging US$1 million to help with relief efforts and offering other forms of aid.
Japanese Cabinet Chief Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that Tokyo was donating US$1 million via its Red Cross to help with relief and reconstruction efforts.
Photo: David Chang, EPA
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also expressed sympathy for the earthquake victims in a message to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) shortly after the quake struck; the message was delivered by Interchange Association, Japan Secretary-General Takashi Hamada.
Abe said in the message that the Japanese government was willing to provide Taiwan with human and material support.
A five-person Japanese rescue team is among the crews searching for the more than 100 people who are believed to still be trapped in the Weiguan Jinlong complex in Tainan’s Yongkang District (永康).
The ministry on Sunday also thanked the US for donating US$500,000 and for its concern for victims of the disaster.
The American Institute in Taiwan said that the US Agency for International Development was giving the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China money to be used to provide immediate assistance to households affected by the quake.
The Mainland Affairs Council on Monday said that Beijing extended its condolences to the affected families and offered to provide necessary assistance through the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.
It also informed the Straits Exchange Foundation that it would donate 2 million yuan (US$304,059) to help with relief and reconstruction efforts, the council said.
The council said it had expressed “its heartfelt appreciation to the mainland side for its generosity and care for Taiwan’s earthquake victims.”
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS