The termination of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Sao Tome and Principe will not affect President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) plan to visit diplomatic allies in Central America next month, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Javier Hou (侯清山) said yesterday.
Tsai’s planned stopover in the US will be made in accordance with past practice, Hou said at a legislative interpellation session.
Hou was responding to a lawmaker’s questions on possible changes to Tsai’s itinerary in the US after the African island nation announced earlier yesterday that it was severing diplomatic relations with Taipei.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The severance of ties is unrelated to Tsai’s Central America trip, Hou said.
Asked whether there would be additional restrictions imposed on Tsai’s stops in the US, Hou said nothing would change and that the journey would be conducted in accordance with past practice.
The ministry is seeking to arrange for Tsai to meet with members of the US Senate and US House of Representatives during her stopovers, he said.
Tsai is to embark on a nine-day state visit on Jan. 7 to four Central American nations: Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.
The president is expected to transit in the US, but the exact locations are still being negotiated and have yet to be announced.
After losing Sao Tome and Principe, Taiwan now has 21 diplomatic allies, mostly small countries that look to it for development aid.
Asked about the risk of losing another diplomatic ally in the two weeks before Tsai starts her overseas trip, Hou said that a yellow “caution” light is flashing in regards to Taiwan’s formal ties with one other country, which he did not name.
After learning that Ambassador to Sao Tome and Principe Her Jian-gueng (何建功) is in Taiwan, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) suggested that he should not return to the country, because Taiwan will close its embassy there after the formal termination of ties.
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