Incoming Straits Exchange Foundation chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) yesterday dismissed media reports claiming that he described cross-strait flights as direct flights.
Chiang, who left for Okinawa yesterday, told reporters at the Taoyuan International Airport that he had never said "cross-strait" aviation routes were "direct" aviation routes after media reports quoted him as saying that during a recent interview with Japanese media.
Chiang said that the "cross-strait aviation route" was a compromise term by both sides after they could not agree on whether they should be defined as international or domestic.
"Hopefully negotiation between Taiwan and China will begin as soon as possible so that the new Cabinet can issue administration orders as soon as Ma is sworn in," Chiang said when talking about president-elect Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) campaign policies of implementing weekend direct charter flights, opening up Taiwan to Chinese tourists and deregulating currency exchange between the New Taiwan dollar and the yuan.
What's more, he stressed in the interview that "scheduled direct flights" between the two sides would be implemented next year.
He said that the resumption of cross-strait dialogue would be the first step toward the improvement of cross-strait relations and that he would not rule out the possibility of high-ranking Chinese officials visiting Taiwan or his visiting China after he takes over as SEF chairman.
Before talking with the new chairman of China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, Chiang said he would visit China twice in his capacity as KMT vice chairman. The first visit is scheduled for Thursday to express gratitude for the support Taiwanese businesspeople showed for Ma while the second visit is scheduled for May 6 to prepare for the resumption of cross-strait dialogue.
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