President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez have reaffirmed the ties between the two nations and promised to take the bilateral relationship into a new era.
In Honduras, at the start of a four-country tour of Central American, Tsai on Monday said that her visit to Honduras and Hernandez’s trip to Taiwan in October last year represent an “important watershed in our relationship.”
“It will develop further from existing friendly diplomatic ties to a steadfast relationship focused on trade and economy that will be mutually beneficial,” Tsai said at a joint news conference following talks between the two leaders and several ministers.
Photo: CNA
“Steadfast” has become a catchword used by the Tsai administration to describe the type of relationship it wants to maintain with Taiwan’s allies. In Chinese, the term also means “matter-of-fact” and “pragmatic.”
Also speaking at the news conference, Hernandez said bilateral ties are set to enter a new phase, in which “a focus on trade” would benefit Taiwanese as well as Hondurans.
He called Tsai “the most respected, the favorite daughter of Honduras.”
Leaders discussed cooperation in agriculture, tourism, textiles, agricultural product processing, as well as assistance Taiwan could provide Honduras to develop micro businesses, Hernandez said.
Five highly competitive products, including potatoes, avocados and coffee, could be exported to Taiwan in the near future, he said.
Tsai said that Hernandez was the first foreign leader to congratulate her after she won the presidential election on Jan. 16 last year.
On the first stop of her four-nation tour of Central America, Tsai said she was deeply impressed with the resilience, prosperity and vitality demonstrated by Hondurans under Hernandez’s leadership.
The two sides have agreed on expanding an existing scholarship program to bring more Honduran students to Taiwan and promoting Taiwanese investment in Honduras, she said.
Earlier in the day, Tsai visited the Basilica de Suyapa, a Catholic church in Tegucigalpa, accompanied by the Honduran president’s mother, Elvira Alvarado, and his sister, Hilda Rosario Hernandez Alvarado.
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater