President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) special envoy to APEC chatted with US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the first day of the APEC leaders' summit Saturday, while looking forward to having the opportunity to talk with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) yesterday on the final day of the event.
"When I was talking with Putin, Bush patted my shoulder from behind and told Putin that I'm a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry," Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (
Lee made the remark on Saturday night during a press conference held after the dinner banquet with 21 economy leaders and members of the APEC Business Advisory Council at the Mapocho Culture Center.
Lee has said that he plans to reiterate the recent string of goodwill gestures extended by President Chen Shui-bian (
"I've never thought that the cross-strait issue is that serious a problem," he said. "Both sides must make efforts to iron out differences and untangle misunderstandings. There's still room for cooperation and development for both sides."
Lee, however, said that both sides have to work together to solve the problem and that it takes a tremendous amount of work and patience to reach the ultimate goal.
While China issued a fresh round of criticism against Chen's proposal to write a new constitution by 2006, Lee dismissed Beijing's argument that the move will lead to instability.
"The proposal has nothing to do with Taiwan's independence," he said. "President Chen has made it clear that it's amending the constitution not enacting a new constitution and that the constitutional amendment would not touch on such issues as the national flag and moniker."
In addition to Bush and Putin, Lee also chatted with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (
"I told him not to worry because we'll exert ourselves to seek peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," he said.
His chin-wagging with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was about a technology forum which both attended before the APEC meeting.
"I remember when I met him two years ago in Los Cabos, Mexico, we talked about the tricks he used to pick up women when he was young," he said.
Lee also revealed that many leaders were talking about the recent intrusion of a Chinese nuclear submarine into Japanese waters and agreed that it was important that member economies share military intelligence. Chen revealed that Taiwan gave the Japanese government information about the sub.
Lee also talked with New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark about the Maori.
"She was kind of surprised when I told her that we're related," he said. "I told her that studies show that the mother of the Maori was related to Taiwan's Atayal Aboriginal tribe, and the father came from Papua New Guinea."
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun complimented Lee on Taiwan's economic achievements over the years made by small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Lee, who delivered a 4-minute speech on the control of infectious diseases at a round-table discussion, described Saturday's chitchat as casual, saying nobody discussed politics.
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