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One of the top stories we were following this past week was President Tsai Ing-wen’s first overseas trip as president. Tsai touched down in Taipei on Saturday afternoon after visiting allied nations in Latin America.
The president attended a ceremony marking the completion of the Panama Canal Expansion Project. She was one of ten heads of state attending the ceremony on June 26th, local time.
Tsai then visited Paraguay, where she met with President Horacio Cartes and addressed the Paraguayan Congress on Tuesday.
Then during a transit stop in Los Angeles, Tsai was met on the plane by Raymond Burghardt, chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which handles relations with Taiwan in the absence of official diplomatic ties.
The president received an enthusiastic welcome from a crowd of overseas compatriots and then attended a banquet for 800 people later that evening.
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Also this past week, Defense Minister Feng Shih-kuan apologized to the family of a fisherman killed on Friday when the navy accidentally fired an anti-ship missile which hit the man’s boat. Three others were injured in the incident, which occurred during a naval training session.
On Saturday, the defense minister traveled to Kaohsiung to offer his apologies and condolences to the captain’s family. He promised to assist the family in getting government compensation and to review military discipline.
Premier Lin Chuan has ordered the Taiwan High Prosecutor’s Office to launch an investigation into the incident.
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And finally, this past week, Taiwan’s top research institute, Academia Sinica, has lowered its forecast for Taiwan’s GDP growth this year to 0.52%. The new forecast, announced Wednesday, is considerably lower than the institute’s earlier prediction of 1.74%, made at the end of 2015.
Academia Sinica analyst Ray Chou has cited the overall weakness of the global economy and the British public’s vote to leave the European Union as the main reasons for the downward adjustment.
Chou also said that Taiwan’s exports largely rely on the Chinese market and that they won’t have much room for improvement this year. He said the dwindling number of Chinese tourists and the upcoming US presidential election could also impact economic growth.