Taiwan has donated 150,000 masks to Goias State in central Brazil to help residents there fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Representative to Brazil Chang Tsung-che (張崇哲) presented the donation to Goias Governor Ronaldo Caiado’s wife, Gracinha Caiado, at a ceremony on Friday. The ceremony was also attended by Goias Deputy Governor Lincoln Tejota and representatives from local volunteer organizations.
The donation reflects the spirit of mutual assistance and collaboration between Taiwanese and Brazilians, Chang said.
Chang expressed the hope that the donation can help local residents mitigate a COVID-19 outbreak and return to their normal lives as soon as possible.
Taiwan has donated 54 million masks to more than 80 countries, including Brazil, since early last year, Chang said.
Gracinha Caiado expressed her thanks and said the masks would be distributed to institutions and organizations involved in the state’s COVID-19 response.
The state of 6.5 million is the third-largest buyer of Taiwan’s corn, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Brazil said.
It has recorded 710,000 COVID-19 cases and 20,080 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
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