The Executive Yuan yesterday set up a special task force to investigate the public uproar over PFP Legislator Kao Ming-chien (
Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Accepting a petition from Kao to redress accusations of treason against him, Wang yesterday asked the Executive Yuan and the Control Yuan -- the country's watchdog agency -- to conduct investigations to clear up the dispute.
PFP legislative whip Chung Shao-ho (
Kao's acceptance of the Beijing-sponsored invitation resulted in Kao and the PFP being bombarded with accusations of treason and of denigrating this country's national status.
The PFP legislators also claimed that the incident would be detrimental to future relations and interactions between the Cabinet and the legislature if the case were not properly inspected.
But to prove that the government did not, in fact, withhold information in order to trick Kao,Cabinet Secretary-General Liu Shih-fang (
However, Liu also stressed that members of the public -- regardless of their political stripes -- should firmly stand on the same side and resist any attempts by China to denigrate Taiwan's sovereignty.
Liu described the diplomatic traps that China had set as "small shoes" that would hobble Taiwan if this country stepped into them.
"If China has given us small shoes to wear, we should not put our feet into them. We should safeguard our national dignity and walk with respect and dignity," Liu said.
Meanwhile, DPP Vice Secretary General Lee Ying-yuan (
Lee was responding to Kao Ming-chien's accusations that his apparent na?vet? in accepting the invitation to the conference was because the DPP government had acted in bad faith.
Lee dismissed Kao's argument and stressed that MOFA had warned Kao in advance about the possibility of being manipulated by China.
"China is clearly the mastermind behind this whole scheme. Kao and the PFP shouldn't be so na?ve as to allow themselves to fall into China's traps," Lee said.
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Michael Kau (
In addition , Lee said, the PFP had been inconsistent and made contradicting statements when defending Kao.
"In the beginning of this, PFP Chairman James Soong (
"Then as soon as things turned ugly, Soong demanded Kao return to Taiwan immediately and argued that Kao was not attending the conference on behalf of the PFP," Lee said.
"Kao should really think twice and ask himself if he hadn't put too much trust in the PFP and had been sold out without realizing it," Lee said.
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
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
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