A delegation led by Tuvaluan Prime Minister Kausea Natano arrived in Taiwan early yesterday morning for a seven-day visit that includes a meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and other top government officials.
Speaking on his first visit to Taiwan since taking office in 2019, the 65-year-old Natano said he looked forward to meeting with Tsai and other officials from government agencies to discuss issues of interest to both countries.
The delegation, which was welcomed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, includes several ministerial officials such as Ampelosa Manoa Tehulu, who is responsible for issues related to infrastructure and the environment, as well as Kitiona Tausi, who is in charge of fishery and trade affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via CNA
The president would officially welcome the Tuvaluan delegation with military honors ahead of a meeting in which both sides would exchange views on the regional situation and climate change, it said.
As Taiwan and the Pacific island state are to mark the 43rd anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations this month, Wu and Natano would sign a joint communique to reaffirm bilateral diplomatic ties, the statement said.
During their week-long stay, the delegation plans to sign two agreements to serve as a basis for bilateral police and coast guard cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior and the Ocean Affairs Council respectively, it said.
The delegation would also ink a memorandum of understanding with Kaohsiung-based National Sun Yat-sen University, which would pave the way for bilateral collaborations on education and maritime research, the statement said.
The delegation is scheduled to be in Taipei until Friday next week.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS