American Institute in Taiwan Chairman Raymond Burghardt yesterday said the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) handling of the election-eve shooting of former vice president Lien Chan’s (連戰) son, Sean Lien (連勝文), was “a sign of political maturity.”
“The way both parties handled that was ... a sign of political maturity,” Burghardt said when he met President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) at the Presidential Office yesterday.
Ma said he felt “shocked” and “deeply regretful” about the shooting incident and hoped that government agencies would improve and change the situation.
Ma said that while most people paid more attention to Saturday’s special municipality election result, he urged them to look at the establishment of the five special municipalities, which he described as a “milestone” and manifestation of his administration’s resolve to restructure the government and balance the north and south.
On defense, Ma urged Washington to sell Taiwan defensive weapons, saying most of the nation’s fighter jets were obsolete and needed to be replaced.
Because many were worried about the military imbalance across the Taiwan Strait, Ma said he was afraid his administration would have to continue to buy defensive weapons from the US.
Ma said he hoped Taipei and Washington could sign an extradition agreement following the cross-strait accord on joint combat of crimes and judicial assistance.
Ma also called on Washington to follow the lead of Canada and the EU in granting Taiwanese tourists visa-waiver privileges.
Ma said that when he took office in 2008, only 53 countries granted the privilege to Taiwanese visitors, but now the number had increased to 96.
People visiting those 96 countries make up 94 percent of the total number of Taiwanese tourists visiting foreign countries, Ma said, adding that the remaining 6 percent go to the US, Australia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS