Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice presidential candidate Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) yesterday declined to confirm whether he had raised the issue of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) playing "dirty tricks" before the presidential election in March during a conversation with American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairman Raymond earlier this month.
"But if there were discussions about the DPP's `dirty tricks,' the topic would have been raised by me, as the US would have no knowledge of those `dirty tricks,'" he said in Taipei when approached for comment.
Siew made the remarks in response to a story published in this paper yesterday in which an anonymous US official denied that Burghardt had expressed concern over DPP "dirty tricks" during his meeting with Siew.
Siew yesterday said he would not discuss the contents of the meeting, as he and Burghardt had agreed to keep their conversation private.
The US official denied that Burghardt had raised concerns about a DPP attempt to win the election by using "dirty tricks," saying the AIT chairman was "almost completely in a listening mode" over the concerns raised by Siew.
The US official denied the existence of minutes of the meeting, as alleged in a report by the Chinese-language Apple Daily.
The minutes, whose authenticity have not been confirmed by AIT or the KMT, seemed to suggest that the US favored the KMT.
The private meeting between Siew and Burghardt was not disclosed until DPP Legislator Sandy Yen (莊和子) on Friday informed Chinese-language newspapers, including the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) and the United Daily News of its having taken place.
Siew yesterday was tight-lipped on whether the minutes had been provided by the KMT, urging the media to take the inquiry to the DPP.
"You should all be focusing on why the information about the meeting was leaked by a DPP legislator," Siew said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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