Sandra Oudkirk yesterday took over as director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) as the country bid farewell to her predecessor, Brent Christensen, who departed for the US.
Oudkirk was seen arriving at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Monday with a mask bearing the greeting, “Hello Taiwan.”
The AIT in a statement yesterday described Oudkirk as a 30-year veteran of the US Foreign Service with a deep understanding of East Asia and Pacific affairs.
Photo: Tony Yao, Taipei Times
She is expected to start in her new role after completing 14 days of quarantine and seven days of self-health management in accordance with Taiwan’s COVID-19 protocols, the AIT said.
Oudkirk “looks forward to building on the successes of her predecessors and to further advancing the US-Taiwan relationship,” it said.
Christensen, who had been the de facto US representative in Taiwan since 2018, arrived at the airport with Taiwanese officials at about 8:30am.
Photo: Tony Yao, Taipei Times
Christensen told reporters that he would “absolutely” return to visit Taiwan.
He was seen waving to reporters as he entered customs to board a US-bound United Airlines flight.
“The first time I left my hometown at age 19, it was to come to Taiwan,” Christensen wrote in a farewell letter released by the AIT on Friday last week.
“From that early age, Taiwan became synonymous for me with the ideas of exchange and understanding, exploration and adventure,” he wrote.
“I may be leaving Taiwan, but Taiwan will never leave me,” he added.
Christensen received a warm send-off from Democratic Progressive Party politicians, who hailed his tenure as a period of significant breakthroughs in Taiwan-US relations.
On June 25, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) awarded Christensen the Order of the Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon in commendation of his efforts in advancing bilateral relations, including facilitating the delivery of 2.5 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from the US.
Vice President William Lai (賴清德), Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) and Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) also thanked Christensen for his contributions to Taiwan.
When asked about his gift of Aiwen mangoes to Christensen, Huang said the fruit was originally imported from Florida and to him it symbolized the friendship between the two countries.
“I hope Christensen was able to enjoy the sweetness of this famous Tainan produce, to show my thanks for the fruitfulness of the bilateral relationship that has prospered under his watch over the past years,” Huang said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS