Dozens of Taiwanese disaster relief and healthcare workers, representatives of charity groups and a medical team led by government officials yesterday left for Nepal, but Taiwan is still waiting for permits from Kathmandu to send search-and-rescue teams, authorities said.
A 37-member team from the Buddha’s Light International Association and physicians and nurses from Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital left in the morning, taking 5 tonnes of relief supplies, including blankets, tents, dried foods and medical supplies.
The team is scheduled to stay in Nepal for five days, International Headquarters Search and Rescue head Lu Cheng-tsung (呂正宗) said.
Photo: Yao Kai-shiou Taipei Times
Six medical personnel from the government-sponsored Taiwan International Health Action led by a Ministry of Health and Welfare official and accompanied by two Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials familiar with the situation in Nepal left in the afternoon.
Representative to India James Tien (田中光), who has been in Kathmandu since the earthquake on Saturday, would assist the relief workers if needed, foreign ministry spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) said.
Kathmandu has not yet accepted Taiwan’s offer to send official search-and-rescue teams.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Kao (高振群) on Monday said that Kathmandu has asked for search-and-rescue help only from neighbors such as China, India and Pakistan, and cited the great distance and the lack of direct flights and diplomatic relations for the handling of Taiwan’s offer.
Early yesterday at a regular news conference, Ministry of National Defense spokesperson David Lo (羅紹和) said the ministry has had everything ready to dispatch C-130 aircraft from Pingtung County to Nepal.
However, anonymous sources at the defense ministry said it would be more efficient to deliver aid via commercial flights than military aircraft because it would take the C-130s 11 to 14 hours to reach Nepal as they would have to fly over open ocean instead of crossing China’s airspace, the sources said.
The lack of diplomatic relations with most nations in the region would also create problems if they were to allow the aircraft through their airspace or grant them necessary refueling stops en route to Nepal, the sources added.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS