The Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation (TAEF) and India’s National Maritime Foundation (NMF) yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding at the Yushan Forum to deepen Taiwan-India cooperation in maritime affairs and regional development.
The signing of the memorandum marks the think tanks’ consensus on maintaining regional prosperity and peace, which could serve as a foundation for Taiwan-India relations, the TAEF said.
Yesterday afternoon, TAEF president Michael Hsiao (蕭新煌) and NMF secretary-general Pradeep Chauhan presided over the signing via videoconferencing.
The NMF, founded in 2005, is India’s primary think tank on maritime issues. It conducts research and analysis of India’s maritime issues in close cooperation with the Indian Navy.
Hsiao said that the agreement marks the beginning of collaboration that would join research on the Pacific and Indian oceans.
In line with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proposed Indo-Pacific Ocean Initiative, India must develop a supportive framework for the initiative, requiring feedback from India’s officials, policymakers and academics, as well as from around the world, Chauhan said.
The foundations are to regularly hold online seminars and expect to arrange visits once disease prevention measures have lessened, he added.
The memorandum, which is a step up from private collaborations, would help to create a more inclusive Indo-Pacific region, TAEF executive officer Yang Hao (楊昊) said.
Yang echoed Chauhan’s comments on planned forums and visits, saying that the forums would hopefully persuade Indian policymakers to give more weight to Taiwan-Indian cooperation on regional issues.
Yesterday, in their first “closed door” meeting, the think tanks shared their views on the Indian initiative and Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy, and established mutual goals, Yang said.
The New Southbound Policy aims to observe and deepen interaction with partner nations, expand collaborative efforts, and promote mutually friendly environments to further economic, industrial, technological, educational, cultural and tourism partnerships.
The partner countries under the policy are the 10 ASEAN members, plus Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The meeting also hoped to lay the groundwork for collaborations, Yang added.
The TAEF said that the deal could serve as a foundation for future Taiwan-India talks.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater