Half a million masks donated by Taiwan arrived on Monday in Victoria, the Australian state with the country’s highest transmission of COVID-19, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
The donation is the latest cooperation between the two nations on COVID-19 prevention since the beginning of this year and exemplifies the slogan “Taiwan is helping” in the fight against the virus, the ministry said.
Taiwan and Australia exchanged key disease prevention supplies in March and held online seminars under the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, an initiative launched by Taiwan and the US in June 2015, the ministry added.
Photo: CNA
Australia is an important partner in the government’s New Southbound Policy and shares the values of democracy and freedom, it said.
The two nations would continue to bolster cooperation in areas such as preventive medicine and biotechnology, the ministry said.
Australia has recorded 26,692 COVID-19 infections, including 816 deaths and 23,573 recovered patients, the majority of whom are in Victoria, the Australian Department of Health Web site showed.
As of Monday, 19,872 infections had been recorded in the state, including 729 deaths and 18,006 recovered patients, while the number of active cases peaked on Aug. 7, Victoria Department of Health and Human Services data showed.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
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