The US government on Tuesday welcomed the signing of four cross-strait agreements meant to strengthen transportation and postal links and address food safety issues.
Washington welcomed the development, the US State Department said.
A State Department official said that increasing contact between both sides of the Strait is conducive to regional stability and prosperity.
The official reiterated that the US has long urged Taiwan and China to engage in constructive dialogue to solve their differences and defuse tensions.
The US policy on Taiwan has remained unchanged and the US was pleased to see Taiwan and China continue to increase their exchanges, the official said.
Larry Walker, press officer at the American Institute in Taiwan, said yesterday “the US welcomes the four agreements on air and sea transports, postal services and food safety signed in Taipei. By facilitating enhanced cross-strait contacts, the agreements help to further regional peace, stability, and prosperity.”
The EU also voiced its support for the agreements on Tuesday, saying they represent “a significant positive step towards finding pragmatic solutions that benefit people on both sides of the [Taiwan] Straits [sic].”
EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana said in a statement that the EU had always taken the firm view that the Taiwan question must be resolved peacefully through constructive dialogue between all concerned parties.
“I therefore commend the determination of both sides to take up these opportunities that contribute to reinforcing stability and security in East Asia,” Solana said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JENNY W. HSU
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