CROSS-STRAIT TIES
KMT-CCP forum on July 28
The eighth annual forum between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will be held on July 28 in Harbin, China, the KMT said yesterday. Former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) will lead the delegation to the Cross-Taiwan Strait Economic and Cultural Forum. Chinese People’s Consultative Conference Chairman Jia Qinglin (賈慶林) will represent the CCP. On the agenda of this year’s forum will be economic and trade cooperation across the Taiwan Strait and peaceful cross-strait development. Educational and cultural exchanges between young people would also be addressed, the KMT said. The director of the KMT’s Mainland Affairs Committee, Kao Hui (高輝), said the two sides would also use the occasion to discuss issues related to the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement. Wu will not meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Beijing following the forum, as the two already met in March, Kao said.
DIPLOMACY
Japanese envoys called in
Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) yesterday reiterated Taiwan’s sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) and said the ministry had summoned officials from Japan’s Interchange Association to stress the nation’s stance. Yang’s remarks came in response to reports that eight Japanese lawmakers had sailed to the islands, known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, on Tuesday to investigate the fishing situation as part of a proposed plan to purchase some of the islands. None of them set foot on any of the uninhabited islands. In related news, the Japan Coast Guard demanded that a Taiwanese patrol boat leave waters around the islands, prompting Japan to issue a formal protest that was rejected by the ministry.
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