Taiwan and the Flanders region of Belgium on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance intergovernmental exchanges, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
The agreement was signed virtually by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Harry Tseng (曾厚仁) in Taipei and Flanders Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary-General Julie Bynens in Belgium, with immediate effect, the ministry said in a statement.
The MOU aims to enhance comprehensive cooperation and consultations between the two sides for closer government-to-government collaboration, it said.
Based on the agreement, both sides would regularly hold talks through a joint commission to expand areas of cooperation, it said.
Taiwan and Flanders are in talks to expand cooperation on the digital economy, network security and other areas of mutual benefit, it added.
Flanders — one of Belgium’s three institutional regions alongside Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital regions — has signed six MOUs with Taiwan covering investment, renewable energy, education and labor, as well as vocational training, public health and science, the ministry said.
The Flemish Parliament in March last year passed legislation to show support for Taiwan, calling for deeper ties as China continues to block the nation from meaningful international engagement.
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