The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday defended the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) criticized the cross-strait economic pact. The KMT said the DPP presidential candidate Tsai was running a smear campaign against the ECFA.
Tsai, in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on Tuesday during her trip to the US, said the DPP would handle any possible adjustments or changes to the ECFA via democratic procedures.
KMT spokesman Chen Yi-hsin (陳以信) said Tsai has previously claimed that she would abandon the ECFA if the DPP regained power and she has now changed her position on the issue.
“Tsai should explain whether she supports the ECFA and stop changing her position on the issue, manipulating it for election purposes,” Chen said.
The KMT also urged Tsai to refrain from focusing her trip in the US on personal attacks against the executive director of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election campaign, King Pu-tsung (金溥聰), who is also in the US on a 12-day campaign trip.
Ma, who also doubles as KMT chairman, yesterday defended King following criticism from Tsai and the DPP over King’s recent comments on cross-strait policy.
In an interview with Phoenix Television in the US, King discussed the Ma administration’s cross-strait policies and the possibility of Ma visiting China if he is re-elected in January. His remarks sparked controversy and attracted criticism from Tsai and the DPP, which said he broke protocol by commenting on government policies when he is not a government official.
“As a senior KMT member and former secretary-general of the party, there’s nothing inappropriate about King discussing the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, which is included in the party’s guidelines. It is not a breach of government protocol,” Ma said during a KMT Central Standing Committee meeting.
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