The fifth round of inter-party negotiations regarding a political deadlock related to the student-led occupation of the legislature broke down yesterday as party caucuses failed to reach consensus on how to resolve the ongoing crisis.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said it would participate in a review of the cross-strait service trade agreement clause-by-clause under two conditions, KMT caucus deputy secretary Alex Fai (費鴻泰) said after the talks, which were held at the home of Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
The KMT demanded that the joint review committee meeting be convened by Wang and that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) not occupy the podium during the proceedings, Fai said.
The DPP, which previously said it would boycott the negotiations, attended the talks with a clear position — the same as that of the “Sunflower student movement” — that the pact must be reviewed, but only after the legislation of a monitoring mechanism for cross-strait agreements, DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said.
“That means the pact is not likely to be reviewed before the current legislative session concludes in May,” Ker said.
Ker added that if the KMT agreed to the “legislation first, review second” approach and to not demand that its lawmakers vote along party lines, the crisis could be resolved and the students would leave the legislative chamber.
As the Executive Yuan is ready to pass its draft proposal of a cross-strait agreement monitoring mechanism, Ker said the DPP would examine whether the proposal meets public expectations before deciding whether it would attend the next round of negotiations.
DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) said the negotiations fell through again because the KMT has failed to update its proposal after the rally of an estimated 500,000 members of the public and students on Sunday, and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who also serves as KMT chairman, should take full responsibility.
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