A group of US Congress members have urged US President George W. Bush to lift a ban on high-level visits between Taiwan and the US to facilitate direct communication with Taiwan's democratically elected leaders.
The members of congress made the call in a letter addressed to Bush this week.
They include Democratic Representative Robert Andrews of New Jersey and Republican representatives Steve Chabot of Ohio, Scott Garrett of New Jersey, Dana Rohrabacher of California, Pete Sessions of Texas and Tom Tancredo of Colorado.
They described the US State Department's "Guidelines on Relations with Taiwan," which bans high-level visits, as "outdated" and having "no sound legal or political basis," adding that the guidelines were adopted in the late 1970s when Taiwan was still ruled by a regime which claimed to represent all of China.
"The transition towards democracy in Taiwan has changed all that: There is now a democratically elected government, which legitimately represents the people of Taiwan," they said.
They said that while US officials sit down with the unelected leaders of a country that is threatening its neighbors, there is every reason for US leaders to sit down with the democratic leaders of the country that is being threatened.
"We should not let Beijing dictate whom we can or cannot welcome to Washington," they said.
They added that despite its transition to a vibrant democracy, Taiwan was still being isolated in the international community owing to China's pressure.
"We believe the United States can and should do more to help Taiwan become a full and equal member of the international community. A first step would be to have direct communications and meetings between top US officials and the democratically elected leaders of Taiwan," they 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