Fisheries Agency Deputy Director Chiang Ying-chih (江英智) yesterday reiterated that long-stalled fisheries talks between Japan and Taiwan, which are likely to be resumed next month, are to focus mainly on Taiwanese fishing rights in the disputed waters near the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), and not on sovereignty.
“The new round of Taiwan-Japan talks would center on the rights of Taiwanese fishing boats to operate near the archipelago and would not touch upon sovereignty issues,” Chiang said on the sidelines of a press conference in Taipei to promote certified agricultural standards (CAS) for aquatic products.
Both countries are engaging in preparatory communications, but the topics to be covered in the talks have yet to be finalized, Chiang added.
Photo: CNA
According to Japanese media reports, the new round of Taiwan-Japan fisheries talks, which would be the 17th round of such talks, could take place as early as next month.
Taiwan is said to have rejected a proposal by Japan to resume the talks after the latter nationalized three of the islands in the chain on Sept. 11, a move that led to widespread protests against Japan and a water-cannon altercation between Taiwanese and Japanese coast guard vessels during a protest voyage by Taiwanese fishermen in waters near the disputed islands.
Japan has been dispatching patrol vessels to expel Taiwanese fishing boats operating within its claimed exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which extends 200 nautical miles (370.4km) from its baseline, including water off the Diaoyutai Islands, which are known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan.
Taiwan and Japan’s 16 rounds of fishery talks have yielded little results thus far.
When pressed by reporters on how fishing rights could be addressed if the matter of the overlapping EEZs of Taiwan and Japan is not, Chiang said the EEZ issue was related to sovereignty dispute because an EEZ stretches from the seaward edge of a country’s claimed territory to a distance of 200 nautical miles.
“The talks aim only to deliberate on fishing operations [near the Diaoyutais,] while shelving any disputed issues,” Chiang said.
As for the overlapping EEZ matter, Chiang said the government was inclined to adopt an approach of joint management to allow simple fishing operations in the area, but added that further discussions were still required.
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