People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
Chang told reporters at CKS International Airport yesterday morning that he had just returned from a meeting with Soong in the US. He said he spoke with Soong about recent rumors of a coalition government being formed between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the PFP.
Stressing that the PFP is an "independent entity" with its own agenda, Chang said that there would be no meeting with Chen after Soong's return, and that PFP officials will not accept posts in the DPP government, as also had been reported in the media.
"Chairman Soong will not accept any position in the DPP administration, and there will be no Chen-Soong meeting," Chang said.
Chang declined to say when Soong would return to Taiwan from the US.
He also confirmed Soong's support for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Wang Jin-pyng's (王金平) re-election bid for legislative speaker.
"There are, however, many in the PFP who are interested in being deputy legislative speaker," Chang said.
When asked if he was preparing to return to the KMT, Chang said he would not do so, though he also said he could not speak for any other party members.
In reaction to Chang's remarks, DPP caucus whip Tsai Huang-liang (
"The DPP's door is always open to the PFP and we have already put the ball in its court," Tsai said.
"However, judging from the pan-blue camp's defiant attitude in vetoing so many bills in the Legislative Yuan, I don't think we stand a very good chance of achieving political reconciliation," he said.
Tsai said that if the pan-blue camp remains uncooperative and provocative in the legislature, it would have to shoulder all res-ponsibility for the political and electoral consequences.
DPP caucus whip Lee Chun-yee (
"I don't know what the Presidential Office's attitude about a Chen-Soong meeting is, but I do know that the door for cooperation has been shut in the Legislative Yuan," he said.
"The pan-blue camp is unable to think about things from the point of view of Taiwan's interests. It only sees party interests, which makes the DPP feel helpless," 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