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.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS