A Socialist Party member of the French National Assembly said on Monday that he believed big democratic countries, such as the US and those in Western Europe, should recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country.
“Not recognizing Taiwan is a mistake,” said Francois Loncle, a member of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee, in an interview with the Central News Agency.
Observing Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections on Saturday from France, Loncle said he found the battles among candidates in Taiwan every bit as intense as in France, which is proof that Taiwan is a democratic country.
Saying he could understand that Taiwanese voters chose President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in the hope that the approach of developing economic and trade links with China would be maintained, he added that he thought Taiwan still needed to maintain its political independence and never lose the democracy, freedom and human rights it enjoys now.
As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the lower house, Loncle said he regreted his country does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country, even if the two maintained unofficial ties and have regular exchanges in various fields.
Loncle said the Socialist Party had yet to form a consensus on the Taiwan issue, but said his personal view was that the party should work out a strategy that would enable the recognition of Taiwan.
France’s two-stage presidential elections are scheduled for April 22 and May 6.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, Charles Tannock, the chairman of a pro-Taiwan group in the European Parliament, on Monday welcomed the outcome of Taiwan’s elections and said he hoped it could pave the way for closer relations between Taiwan and the EU. According to an online report in the Parliament, an EU magazine, the British politician said that while the EU supported the so-called “one China” policy, it still hoped to sign an economic cooperation agreement with Taiwan.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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