The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday criticized the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) planned march tomorrow to oppose the government’s decision to relax restrictions on US beef as an election gambit.
KMT spokesman Lee Chien-jung (李建榮) said the march was initiated by Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) of the DPP.
Information the KMT gathered from southern Taiwan indicated that the event was organized to set the stage for Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (?]) and former Presidential Office secretary-general Mark Chen (陳唐山), who have expressed an interest in the party’s nomination for next year’s mayoral election in Tainan City, which will be integrated with Tainan County into a special municipality, Lee said.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Su, along with a number of civic groups, has called on the public to join a demonstration in Taipei tomorrow to protest the central government’s decision to lift the ban on US bone-in beef and beef organs.
The demonstration will start at Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT station at 2pm and end on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office, where a rally will take place until 9pm.
Rebutting Lee’s accusation, DPP Spokesman Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), at a separate setting yesterday, said the central government’s decision to widen US beef access into Taiwan has spurred strong objection from all sides, especially from the public.
A string of civic groups such as the John Tung Foundation and the Consumers’ Foundation are calling for a referendum to be held on the issue, he pointed out.
Tsai said several pan-blue heads of local government, such as Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), have also spoken out against the lifting of the ban, “but their objection is merely a show because they are unwilling to take concrete action to oppose the policy.”
“The demand for the government to safeguard public health should be backed up with bipartisan support and it is very regrettable that the KMT has chosen to smear the issue and disrespected the people’s will,” Tsai said.
Despite the possibility of the US agreeing to a new round of talks being slim, the DPP will continue to make the demand, Tsai said.
He added that the party would exhaust every measure to force the government to launch fresh talks before considering employing other methods such as organizing a consumer boycott of US beef.
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
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
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