President Chen Shui-bian (
"Former minister of justice Chen Ding-nan (
"For the sake of collectively fighting crime and terrorist activities, there is an urgent need for both sides to sign a judicial mutual assistance agreement," he said.
Chen made the remarks when receiving a delegation made up of Canadian senators and members of parliament at the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon.
As the Japanese government made permanent its offer of visa-free entry to Taiwanese travelers last September, Chen called on Canada to follow suit.
The president also told the Canadian guests that his administration would soon decide whether it was safe to lift the ban on the importation of Canadian beef based on professional and scientific assessments. Chen said Taiwan would also consider information provided by the Canadian government.
With the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) approaching, Chen also called on Canada to continue supporting Taiwan's 10th consecutive bid for observer status in the international health organization.
The Canadian parliament had passed five resolutions in the past two years endorsing Taiwan's WHA bid.
The president said yesterday he believed the international community did not want to see Taiwan excluded from the global disease prevention network.
A source at the Presidential Office told the Taipei Times yesterday that the administration may try a different approach in its WHA bid this year.
In addition to continuing the traditional strategy of mobilizing the country's diplomatic allies to initiate debates on Taiwan's bid in the plenary meeting, the official said that one of the plans under consideration was to highlight Taiwan's qualification for gaining accession to the global health body.
"It sounds a good idea to compare the performance of of Taiwanese and Chinese medical professionals to reflect the fact that Taiwan is more qualified to become a member of the world health organization than China," he 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