Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Ma, who doubles as Taipei mayor, said that the KMT would rather let the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration willingly come up with its own draft bill on opening direct cross-strait transport links.
Ramming the draft amendments through the legislature would not be good for the country, Ma said, adding that even if the opposition-initiated bill were passed by the legislature, its implementation would still depend on the Executive Yuan.
Ma again called for the DPP administration to begin working on the cross-strait direct links issue for the mutual benefit of the people on both sides of the Strait.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Thursday was the deadline for negotiations among the legislative caucuses from the pan-green and pan-blue camps on the draft bill.
Lawmakers from the two camps failed to make any headway on the last day of negotiations, with both sides refusing to budge an inch in their stances.
Since last Friday, pan-green legislators have blocked the KMT-led opposition -- which holds a slight majority in the legislature -- from putting the draft bill to a vote. The pan-green camp opposes the bill because they say it would undermine the government's authority to set cross-strait policy.
The PFP, which initiated the draft bill, has insisted that since the four-month negotiation period has expired, the bill must be passed before the current legislative session ends on Wednesday.
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
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
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