Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), in a meeting with American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Brent Christensen, expressed hope that the US would support with concrete action the nation’s belief in the pursuit of freedom, democracy and human rights, the party said yesterday.
The meeting at the AIT’s Taipei office followed a March meeting between the two at the party’s headquarters in Taipei, when Christensen congratulated Chiang on his election as KMT chairman that month, the party said in a statement.
At the meeting yesterday, the two sides exchanged views on topics including post-COVID-19 pandemic economic revitalization, and cooperation between Taiwan and the US; bilateral political party diplomacy; and city-to-city exchanges, it said.
Photo courtesy of the Chinese Nationalist Party
Chiang said that the KMT hopes the US can, through concrete action, support Taiwan’s “belief in the pursuit of universal values including freedom, democracy and human rights,” and that the KMT is to bolster party diplomacy and continue to support the “longstanding tradition of close Taiwan-US relations,” it said.
The KMT said that Christensen told Chiang that the US has always viewed Taiwan as a reliable trade partner, and that cooperation and exchanges between the 14 KMT-controlled cities and counties and local US governments would be of benefit to both sides.
Christensen was pleased that the KMT is re-establishing its representative office in Washington, the party said, adding that yesterday’s meeting was significant amid its efforts to promote interaction between the two sides and party diplomacy.
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,