American Institute in Taiwan Chairman Raymond Burghardt yesterday said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) handling of the election-eve shooting of former vice president Lien Chan’s (連戰) son, Sean Lien (連勝文), was “a sign of political maturity.”
“The way both parties handled that was ... a sign of political maturity,” Burghardt said when he met President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) at the Presidential Office yesterday.
Ma said he felt “shocked” and “deeply regretful” about the shooting incident and hoped that government agencies would improve and change the situation.
Ma said that while most people paid more attention to Saturday’s special municipality election result, he urged them to look at the establishment of the five special municipalities, which he described as a “milestone” and manifestation of his administration’s resolve to restructure the government and balance the north and south.
On defense, Ma urged Washington to sell Taiwan defensive weapons, saying most of the nation’s fighter jets were obsolete and needed to be replaced.
Because many were worried about the military imbalance across the Taiwan Strait, Ma said he was afraid his administration would have to continue to buy defensive weapons from the US.
Ma said he hoped Taipei and Washington could sign an extradition agreement following the cross-strait accord on joint combat of crimes and judicial assistance.
Ma also called on Washington to follow the lead of Canada and the EU in granting Taiwanese tourists visa-waiver privileges.
Ma said that when he took office in 2008, only 53 countries granted the privilege to Taiwanese visitors, but now the number had increased to 96.
People visiting those 96 countries make up 94 percent of the total number of Taiwanese tourists visiting foreign countries, Ma said, adding that the remaining 6 percent go to the US, Australia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,