The Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) yesterday confirmed that the first cross-strait Economic Cooperation Committee (ECC) meeting will be held from Tuesday to Thursday in Taoyuan. Negotiations will focus on implementing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), which was signed with China in June last year.
The ECC, established by the foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), will handle the implementation of the ECFA, which took effect last month. The topics to be discussed include the establishment of working groups, negotiation on follow-up agreements and the implementation of the ECFA’s early-harvest program, the foundation said in a press release.
Top negotiators from the two sides, led by SEF Vice Chairman Kao Koong-lian (辜孔廉) and ARATS Vice Chairman Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中), will start “three plus one” discussions to review the implementation of the early-harvest list, which allows preferential tariff treatment, and the possible opening of trade group offices on either side.
The three plus one talks refer to negotiations on the liberalization of the commodities trade and service sectors, a dispute--resolution mechanism and a cross-strait investment agreement.
Meanwhile, ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) will lead a delegation of officials and Chinese businessmen on a visit to Taiwan on Wednesday for a six-day visit.
During their stay, Chen and the delegation will visit industrial parks, harbors and enterprises in Taipei and southern cities and counties, including Greater Kaohsiung, Chiayi and Yunlin.
It will be the first time that Chen has visited southern cities run by Democratic Progressive Party administrations.
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