Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday called for widespread public support for a KMT-initiated referendum on the country's UN bid on the grounds that it would not have any adverse effects on the region's stability.
Ma said the KMT-proposed referendum on pushing for the country's UN membership under its official title, the "Republic of China" (ROC), would not stir up concerns from other countries because the party has taken into account the possible response before seeking public endorsement for the referendum.
"The US has spoken out against the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) UN bid referendum plan several times, but it has not criticized the KMT-proposed one," Ma said.
"The KMT-initiated referendum is more flexible and thus is beneficial to Taiwan," he said.
Along with the presidential election slated for March 22, two referendums on the country's UN bid, one initiated by the KMT and the other initiated by the DPP, will be held simultaneously.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Friday in a year-end news conference that the US supports a "one-China" policy and opposes the DPP's planned UN referendum, which she branded as provocative.
Commenting on Rice's remarks, DPP presidential hopeful Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said yesterday that the KMT-proposed referendum on applying to rejoin the UN under the name "ROC" and the party's insistence on adopting a two-step voting method in the coming legislative and presidential elections were "plots" to undermine the DPP's referendum on Taiwan's UN cause.
The KMT does not really intend to promote its UN bid referendum, and it is merely a covert move to sabotage the one proposed by the DPP, Hsieh said.
Hsieh added that Washington was aware of this and that Beijing did not object to the KMT's plans.
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