The date of the annual twin-city forum between Taipei and Shanghai has not been confirmed and city government officials are to visit Shanghai later in the month to discuss the details, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
As the two cities have taken turns hosting the forum since the first in 2010, this year’s Taipei-Shanghai forum would be held in Shanghai, but the city government has not yet confirmed when it would be held or whether Ko would attend.
Local media yesterday reported that the 10th Taipei-Shanghai forum would be held next month and that Beijing has approved of Ko’s recent “answer” on the cross-strait relationship.
Photo: CNA
The report said Ko’s remark that “cross-strait affairs is not diplomatic relations nor international relations, but rather cross-strait relations with an exclusive positioning” was an acceptable answer to the Chinese government, the report said.
Ko made the remark in an interview with China Review News Agency on Thursday last week, in which he spoke about his idea of complying with the existing legal system and positioning the twin-city forum as exchanges between cross-strait cities.
At the Taipei City Council yesterday, Ko was asked whether the date for the forum has been set.
Ko said that as the forum would be held in Shanghai, it would take the dominant role this time, so the city government had been “informed to visit Shanghai to talk it over,” and that the visit had been scheduled for the middle of this month.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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