A dozen US congressmen on Wednesday paid tribute to Taiwan and to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Yu Shyi-kun in Washington, marking a highlight on a day in which a planned meeting with high-level State Department officials fizzled because most of the officials were out of town.
Yu confirmed that he did not make it to the State Department, but told the Taipei Times that it was because of "other scheduled events."
He said that he sent a deputy delegation leader to meet with lower-level department officials instead.
Nevertheless, Yu said through an interpreter that he was "very happy" with his visit, which he described as "so far, so good."
He said he was fulfilling the main purpose, which was "party diplomacy," meetings with members of Congress, a speech scheduled for yesterday at the Heritage Foundation and meetings with the Taiwanese-American community.
The congressional reception contrasted sharply with the scene at the Taiwanese mansion, Twin Oaks, on Tuesday night, where some 50 demonstrators -- supporters of the pan-blue camp -- protested his visit.
The demonstrators, wearing red ribbons to echo calls by the anti-Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) movement for supporters in Taiwan to tie a red ribbon around a tree to signal their disapproval of the president, shouted anti-Chen and anti-Yu slogans as guests entered for a dinner in Yu's honor.
One of the main sources of the US protesters' ire was comments Yu made in New York on Monday, in which he stated that the rains that pelted anti-Chen demonstrators over the weekend were a divine intervention to spoil the demonstration and the anti-Chen movement.
Yu later told reporters that his comments were made in a private conversation and had been taken out of context.
Yu said the issue of the anti-Chen demonstrations did not come up in his meetings with US agencies.
"No one mentioned this topic," he told the Taipei Times.
He said the main topics of conversation were constitutional reform, Taiwan's defense budget and US arms sales to Taiwan.
At the last minute, Yu canceled a press conference scheduled for yesterday evening. Taiwanese officials told reporters the cancelation had been caused by the press of Yu's other scheduled meetings.
But reporters speculated that the cancelation was because of the grilling Yu received from the press during his visit regarding his New York comments.
During Yu's visit, the Taiwanese press have taken every opportunity to ask him questions, and he has given several interviews at events during the visit.
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