Taiwanese-Americans will join other protest groups for a demonstration outside the White House next week when Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) arrives in Washington. The groups — including Uighurs and Tibetans — will gather in Lafayette Square and are almost certain to be seen by Xi and his entourage.
Xi, expected to be China’s next president and chair of the National People’s Congress, will meet with US President Barack Obama on Tuesday for wide-ranging talks that could lay the foundation for future US-China relations.
The joint protest is to express “deep concern” about Chinese repression against Tibet and East Turkestan and about China’s continuing refusal to renounce the use of force against Taiwan.
Formosan Association for Public Affairs president Mark Kao (高龍榮) has written to Obama, appealing for him to “reaffirm America’s support for freedom, democracy and human rights in Taiwan.”
He says in the letter: “We understand that the US needs to engage China. However, such engagement should not come at the expense of America’s core values. We ask that you remind Mr Xi that it is a core interest of the US that the future of Taiwan be resolved peacefully and with the express consent of the people of Taiwan. We ask that you impress upon Mr Xi that China dismantle its 1,600 missiles targeted at Taiwan and renounce the use of force against Taiwan.”
Kao added that it was essential that China end Taiwan’s international political isolation.
“Taiwan deserves an equal place in the international family of nations, and its people should be fully represented in international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization and others,” he said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
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