President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday he would not mind if China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) addresses him as “Mr Ma” when the Chinese official visits Taiwan later this year.
Ma made the remark in response to a question from a reporter about how Ma and Chen would address each other.
Chen has accepted Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung’s (江丙坤) invitation to visit Taipei later this year after their meeting in Beijing last week for negotiations on direct cross-strait flights and allowing more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan.
During Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung’s (吳伯雄) visit to China earlier this month, Wu referred to the Taiwanese president as “Mr Ma” at his meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤).
Ma said yesterday the “best way” would be for him to call the ARATS chief “Mr Chen,” while Chen could call him “Mr Ma.”
He said he did not think it would denigrate the country’s sovereignty as long as both sides are on an “equal footing.”
Ma said the agreement Chen and Chiang signed did not include dates because it was a well-established practice between the SEF and ARATS to leave the dates involved in an agreement to a later time.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
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