President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday called for the legislative review of the cross-strait service trade agreement to be sped up while meeting with heads of the administrative branches, and said the government would start negotiations with China on trade in goods as the next step of cross-strait economic exchanges.
“Foreign businesses in Taiwan and our neighboring nations are concerned about our determination and sincerity in handling the agreement. The Legislative Yuan should let the pact enter the review process as soon as possible,” Ma said.
Ma made the remarks in a meeting with top officials from the Executive Yuan, Legislative Yuan, Control Yuan, Examination Yuan and Judicial Yuan at the Presidential Office to discuss national affairs.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) took a leave of absence to attend his brother’s funeral. Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) attended the meeting on his behalf.
The passage of the agreement has been stalled since it was signed in June as the Legislative Yuan continues to organize public hearings and seek consensus on the agreement.
The transparency of the service trade agreement has been challenged by the opposition camp, and the service industry is concerned about what it says will be negative repercussions of the pact on business opportunities in Taiwan.
Ma’s urge for the approval of the agreement comes during the visit of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Deming (陳德銘).
Meanwhile, the president defended the government’s efforts to strengthen diplomatic ties with allied nations in light of the Gambia’s decision to end diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
“We should not deny the achievements of the flexible diplomacy policy over the past five years because of this one case. We have consolidated our friendships with allied nations and expanded our international space,” he said.
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh made an abrupt announcement earlier this month of a break of diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
He denied that China was the reason behind his decision and insisted that it was made in the Gambia’s strategic national interests.
Taiwan terminated its ties with the Gambia on Nov. 18.
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