Taiwan received a letter from WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) on Wednesday inviting it to attend the annual World Health Assembly (WHA) to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from May 16 to May 25, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said yesterday.
Yang confirmed the news in response to a query from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) -Legislator Liu Shen-liang (劉盛良) at the legislature’s Foreign and Defense Affairs Committee.
The WHA is the WHO’s governing body. The invitation will be the third consecutive year Taiwan has been invited to attend the annual world health conference as an observer.
“[This] proves that rapprochement in cross-strait relations is beneficial to the promotion of benign cross-strait interactions in the international arena,” Yang said.
Taiwan was first invited by the WHO on April 28, 2009, to take part as an observer in that year’s WHA meeting under the name “Chinese Taipei.”
This year’s invitation is exactly the same as the one Taiwan received for the last two years, Yang said, referring to the format of the invitation and the manner in which Department of Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) was addressed as “minister.”
A drunk woman was sexually assaulted inside a crowded concourse of Taipei Railway Station on Thursday last week before a foreign tourist notified police, leading to calls for better education on bystander intervention and review of security infrastructure. The man, surnamed Chiu (邱), was taken into custody on charges of sexual assault, taking advantage of the woman’s condition and public indecency. Police discovered that Chiu was a fugitive with prior convictions for vehicle theft. He has been taken into custody and is to complete his unserved six-month sentence, police said. On Thursday last week, Chiu was seen wearing a white
EVA Airways, one of the leading international carriers in Taiwan, yesterday said that it was investigating reports that a cabin crew manager had ignored the condition of a sick flight attendant, who died on Saturday. The airline made the statement in response to a post circulating on social media that said that the flight attendant on an outbound flight was feeling sick and notified the cabin crew manager. Although the flight attendant grew increasingly ill on the return flight, the manager did not contact Medlink — a system that connects the aircraft to doctors on the ground for treatment advice during medical
The Taoyuan Flight Attendants’ Union yesterday vowed to protest at the EVA Air Marathon on Sunday next week should EVA Airway Corp’s management continue to ignore the union’s petition to change rules on employees’ leave of absence system, after a flight attendant reportedly died after working on a long-haul flight while ill. The case has generated public discussion over whether taking personal or sick leave should affect a worker’s performance review. Several union members yesterday protested at the Legislative Yuan, holding white flowers and placards, while shouting: “Life is priceless; requesting leave is not a crime.” “The union is scheduled to meet with
‘UNITED FRONT’ RHETORIC: China’s TAO also plans to hold weekly, instead of biweekly, news conferences because it wants to control the cross-strait discourse, an expert said China’s plan to expand its single-entry visa-on-arrival service to Taiwanese would be of limited interest to Taiwanese and is a feeble attempt by Chinese administrators to demonstrate that they are doing something, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) said the program aims to facilitate travel to China for Taiwanese compatriots, regardless of whether they are arriving via direct flights or are entering mainland China through Hong Kong, Macau or other countries, and they would be able to apply for a single-entry visa-on-arrival at all eligible entry points in China. The policy aims
RSS