Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) questioned Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday about the government’s plans to cooperate with China in developing the waters around Diaoyutai (釣魚台) and Taiping Island (太平島), the biggest islet in the Spratly Islands.
Fielding questions from Wong during a legislative question-and-answer session, Wu failed to give clear answers, saying only that the government wanted to tap the resources in the waters around the islands with other countries.
“Is the government going to cooperate with China to counter Japan and Philippines?” Wong asked. “As the sovereignty over the waters is in dispute, the plan could start wars.”
He “had not heard of a concrete plan, but we cannot let go of these waters too easily and that was the government’s direction,” Wu said.
“There are abundant mineral resources in the waters around the Diaoyutai, over which we have sovereignty. But Japan disagrees with this … We hoped we could set aside disputes about these waters and maybe it would be possible to jointly tap into the resources,” Wu said.
Wong said afterwards that she did not have more information on the issue, but she thought that Wu had tried to avoid answering questions of great concern to the nation’s safety and sovereignty.
During her questioning, Wong also said that researchers who joined a team organized by the National Science Council for a marine surveys project had shared their results with China’s State Council after being told to do so by National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起).
Wong said information about marine meteorology, continental shelf, ocean temperatures and marine biology were given to China and China had registered the information with the UN.
“This caused very serious damage to the country’s sovereignty. It not only meant that the UN recognized Taiwan as part of China’s territory, but also helped China enhance its marine strength,” Wong said.
Wu said he was not aware of the issue and promised to look into it.
In other news, Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) told DPP Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) yesterday that the government’s plan to decriminalize prostitution in red-light districts would not be off limits to married men.
Jiang said that allowing married men to seek prostitutes was contrary to the Criminal Code, which considers such an act to be adultery.
“We are also considering the possibility of decriminalizing adultery,” Jiang 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