Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) returned home yesterday from a five-day trip to Japan and said he was pleased with the “constructive” visit, which could facilitate closer bilateral exchange.
After meetings with Japanese politicians on the first four days of his trip, Su took an opportunity for a rare “non-political” visit to a citizen-funded power station in Edogawa City, Tokyo, yesterday and found the experience “inspirational.”
Established in 1997, the Edogawa City First Power Station was funded by residents who supported an anti-nuclear campaign. It generates power using solar panels.
Citing the example of the station, which he said was “a small, yet right step toward making changes,” Su underlined the importance of an anti-nuclear awareness among citizens and called for Taiwanese to support a proposed anti-nuclear referendum in New Taipei City (新北市).
Edogawa City is a good example for Taiwanese, who face the same risk as the Japanese as well as people in other countries with nuclear power plants, and shows that nuclear power was not be the only option and citizens could make a change, he said.
Having advocated a nuclear-free homeland initiative for three decades, the DPP shared the views of the residents of Edogawa City and is ready to push for the legislation of an act to promote the initiative in the legislature this year, Su said.
Turning to the primary objective of his trip, Su said he was pleased with the visit during which he met with representatives from major political parties, including the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), New Komeito and Your Party, as well as the LDP think tank.
In terms of the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) dispute, Su said the DPP delegation “had expressed clearly to its Japanese counterparts that Taiwan claims sovereignty of the islands,” but recognized that both sides have different views on the issue.
However, both sides also recognized the significance of peace and stability in the region, Su said.
The DPP proposed to resolve the most urgent issue of fishing rights as soon as possible through bilateral negotiation, he added.
“We have made the same appeal to all the Japanese politicians we’ve met because the interference of the third party would not be helpful to resolving the dispute and would likely jeopardize the friendship between Taiwan and Japan,” Su 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
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