Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) arrived in New York late on Saturday, making him the first senior Taiwanese official to visit the US after Taiwan signed a landmark trade pact with China.
Chiang said one of the main purposes of his visit was to chair a meeting of leading officials from the GIO’s 13 offices in the US and Canada to get first-hand information about their work and problems they have encountered.
Chiang said he would also visit mainstream media organizations during his visit and meet think tank academics to exchange views on the latest developments in cross-strait relations.
“Significant changes have happened in the Taiwan Strait and international situations in the past two years, particularly in cross-strait relations, which have entered a new era after the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement,” Chiang said after his arrival at Newark International Airport in New Jersey.
Against this backdrop, he said, the GIO must update its international publicity strategy and the way it communicates government policy to the international community.
“I will take advantage of this trip to meet think tank academics and media representatives to discuss the cross-strait situation and Taiwan-US relations,” Chiang said, adding that he would brief them on Taiwan’s latest developments and changes in its ties with China and Asia as a whole.
The media outlets on Chiang’s itinerary include Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Washington Times. He will give interviews with the Associated Press and Voice of America.
Chiang is scheduled to meet with correspondents of major international news media at the National Press Club in Washington.
In addition to visiting the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, a New York-based think tank, Chiang will also deliver a speech at a meeting organized by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and the Overseas Press Club of America.
He will also attend a seminar organized by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington.
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
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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