President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said he was concerned about the nation’s economic development after a free-trade agreement (FTA) between South Korea and the US came into force last week, adding that the government’s plan to partially lift a ban on US beef imports would help facilitate trade relations with other countries.
Defending the government’s policy on US beef containing ractopamine, an animal feed additive, Ma said that the US beef issue also involved matters of national interest other than the public’s health, such as the economy and trade, adding that the pressure was now on Taipei to address the issue to facilitate bilateral talks with the US over the stalled Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).
“Resuming the negotiations through the TIFA and signing FTAs or economic pacts with the US and other countries is a pressing matter for Taiwan because we need to avoid being marginalized in regional economic integration,” Ma told the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Central Standing Committee.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The FTA between South Korea and the US took effect last Thursday, just as Taipei stepped up efforts to defend its US beef policy by linking the issue to the nation’s economic development with other countries and stressing the urgency of resolving the beef issue.
The KMT’s Central Standing Committee invited Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) and Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Sheng-chung (林聖忠) to report on the impact of the US-South Korea FTA on the nation’s economy.
Yang and Lin said the FTA would affect Taiwanese exports to the US and warned that Taiwan should resume negotiations with the US on the TIFA and use the economic platform to seek an FTA with the US as a long-term goal.
The president also criticized the previous Democratic Progressive Party administration for notifying the WTO in August 2007 that it was considering easing the ban on the use of the feed additives in meat products and said his administration aimed to fulfill the promise as a responsible government.
“We need to solve the US beef issue to facilitate economic development. It’s also about the nation’s credibility in the international community ... However, my administration will not sacrifice the public’s health in return for any economic interests. Public health will remain our top priority when handling the issue,” Ma said.
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
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
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