Taiwan and Nauru yesterday signed an aviation services agreement, marking the beginning of bilateral cooperation in air transportation between the two nations.
The pact was signed by Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) and Nauruan President Lionel Aingimea at a ceremony witnessed by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) at the Presidential Office in Taipei.
Under the agreement, Taiwanese and Nauruan commercial flight operators are allowed to operate inbound and outbound flight services between the two nations.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Nauru Airlines last month sent representatives to Taiwan to discuss airline cooperation, such as extending its flight routes to Taipei, Tsai said.
Tsai told Aingimea that she was looking forward to the start of direct flights between Taiwan and Nauru, which would further people-to-people exchanges between the diplomatic allies.
Nauru Airlines at present is the only commercial airline that flies from Taiwan to Nauru, with connections to Brisbane, Australia; Tarawa, Kiribati; Nadi, Fiji; and Majuro, the Marshall Islands.
Tsai thanked Aingimea for voicing his support for Taiwan in Madrid at the just-concluded 25th Session of the Conference of the Parties, organized by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Nauru is looking forward to building a brighter future with Taiwan, Aingimea said.
“Taiwan has strongly supported Nauru’s infrastructure and economic development. When Nauru experienced a financial crisis in the 1990s, it was Taiwan that helped revive the operations of Nauru Airlines,” he said.
Following the signing ceremony, Aingimea was treated to some stinky tofu, with Tsai saying that the dish was chosen because the Nauruan president had previously mentioned to her that he would “like to try it the next time I am in Taiwan.”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods