Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) will lead a delegation on a visit to the US from Sept. 12 until Sept. 21 in an effort to drum up support, her campaign office announced yesterday.
In one of the most important overseas visits for the DPP presidential candidate, Tsai is expected to meet with US Department of State officials to discuss Taiwan-US and Taiwan-China relations, the campaign office said, without elaborating on specific agenda issues.
Tsai is scheduled to spend two or three days in Washington, where she will meet academics from various think tanks and US congressional representatives, as well as attend fundraising dinners organized by overseas Taiwanese communities, Tsai’s campaign spokesperson Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) said.
The delegation will then make a short two-day trip to Boston, where Tsai will make a speech at Harvard University, the alma mater of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Tsai’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opponent in January’s presidential election.
Tsai’s Harvard speech was planned strictly because of the university’s prestigious academic reputation and has nothing to do with Ma, Hsu said in response to questions by reporters.
After Boston, the delegation will travel to the US west coast and make stops in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which boast some of the largest Taiwanese communities in the US, before returning to Taiwan.
The response from Taiwanese-American communities has been overwhelming as invitations from cities throughout the US poured into Tsai’s campaign office, inviting her delegation to visit, Hsu said.
“Since we have only 10 days, we are trying to squeeze in as many cities as possible,” she said, adding that details of the itinerary are still being worked out and more cities, such as New York, could be added to the schedule.
The delegation will mainly consist of members of the DPP’s New Frontier Foundation think tank and former DPP administration officials. The size of the delegation has yet to be finalized.
“One thing I can assure you is that it will not be a small delegation,” Hsu said. “The DPP is taking this trip very seriously.”
In June, Tsai made trips to the Philippines, Germany and UK.
A visit to Japan, one of Taiwan’s most important allies, is also in the pipeline, Hsu said, adding that Tsai would like to visit Japan, but nothing can be confirmed at this time.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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,