Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) yesterday praised Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) for hosting the fourth round of cross-strait negotiations and thanked police for keeping order during his stay in the city.
Speaking at a dinner banquet hosted by Hu at the Windsor Hotel, Chen also praised former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰), who attended the banquet as a guest, for leading a delegation to visit China in 2005 and laying the foundations for the “peaceful development” of cross-strait relations.
“The Taiwan Strait used to be clouded in darkness and was a dangerous place ... Chairman Lien overcame various hurdles and turned a new page in the history of cross-strait relations. To the Chinese people, he is the pioneer of peaceful cross-strait development,” Chen said.
LIEN
Lien hosted a banquet at the Ambassador Hotel in Taipei to welcome Chen during the second round of cross-strait negotiations last year that was marred by violent protests outside of the hotel.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) made an effort this year to dissuade Lien and other KMT heavyweights, including former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), from hosting banquets to avoid protests.
Hu responded to Lien’s complaint about not being able to host a banquet this time by arranging for Lien to accompany Chen as the two entered the banquet and seated them next to each other.
Lien later lauded the ARATS and the Straits Exchange Foundation for their accomplishments in promoting cross-strait relations while addressing the banquet.
“All of you are engaged in work that will have a long-term impact and the international community is paying a lot of attention to the negotiations ... We expect cross-strait relations to continue moving forward,” he said.
GUESTS
Former premier Hau Pei-tsun (郝柏村) and various business tycoons including Yulun Group chief executive officer Kenneth Yen (嚴凱泰) and Far Eastern Group chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) were also invited to the banquet.
Hu said he invited businesspeople to attend the banquet to foster closer economic relations with China and said he expected cross-strait negotiations to benefit people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
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