Taiwan’s embassy in Haiti yesterday presented Haiti’s national police and army with protective equipment such as helmets, tactical knee pads, eye protectors and bulletproof vests to support their fight against powerful gangs.
Haiti’s prime minister’s office said 400 individual kits had been delivered, for a total of 800 kits from Taiwan in two years.
“This donation is not only a material contribution; it also reflects a sincere and lasting friendship between Haiti and Taiwan,” Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille said in a statement.
Photo: REUTERS
The Caribbean nation is one of Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic allies. It also maintains a trade office in Beijing.
A handful of countries have pledged a total of 2,900 police for a UN-backed police mission in Haiti. However, so far, only 400 Kenyan police have been deployed.
Kenyan and Haitian media have reported a lack of key equipment and delays in paying their wages.
With little more than a month left in the mission’s mandate, results have been scarce with many pledges left unfulfilled.
Nearly 580,000 people are internally displaced in Haiti, and millions are going hungry.
Haiti’s army was reinstated in 2017 after it was dismantled during the 1990s. However, it is the national police that leads efforts against the country’s gangs.
As of the end of May, the national police had 12,000 officers, down by more than 1,000 from the start of the year, UN data showed.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS