With the Presidential Office planning to send a high-ranking delegation to Washington in mid-January, the US government has reiterated its opposition to President Chen Shui-bian's (
"Clearly, we've said that we oppose any unilateral measures that affect the status quo, including this referendum," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said during his daily press briefing.
"We have made our concerns very well known. I think they're a matter of public record and private discussions. And we would urge the government of Taiwan to heed them," he said.
One day after Chen signed the Referendum Law (公投法), the Presidential Office yesterday confirmed the planned visit to Washington to assure the US government that Chen's proposed March 20 referendum will not violate his " five noes" pledge, but said the visit has yet to be agreed by both sides.
The administration of US President George W. Bush has repeatedly voiced its opposition to the referendum over the past several weeks, as Chen has pressed his intention to go ahead with the vote in the face of increased saber-rattling by Beijing and US concerns over maintaining good relations with China.
These concerns came to a head on Dec. 9, when Bush met visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
The delegation's trip is expected to be an attempt to allay US fears over the referendum, and to explain that it would not endanger US interests or the status quo.
Mainland Affairs Council Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,