Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Sinbei City mayoral candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) yesterday attended the first large-scale campaign event organized by the party’s Taipei County branch, targeting attacks at his rival, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Accompanied by Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋), who was persuaded to withdraw from the competition by senior party officials, Chu promised to establish Sinbei as a competitive city with the construction of several MRT lines over the next 10 years.
“Sinbei City will be as competitive as Taipei City. I will devote all my effort to the development of the city, and will be a mayor who cooperates with both central and local governments,” he said in Taipei County’s administrative capital, Banciao.
Chu also promised not to use the position of Sinbei mayor as a springboard for the presidential election in 2012, something he said Tsai was certain to do.
“We do not want a mayor who leaves to campaign in 2012, and we do not want a mayor who will confront the central government and refuse to cooperate with our neighbors in Taipei City and Taoyuan City,” he added.
Tsai announced her intention to run in Sinbei City last night. Since former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) declared his intention to run in the Taipei City mayoral race, many DPP figures had urged Tsai to represent the party in the Sinbei race.
Chou cited municipal projects in Taipei County, including the dredging of the Danshui River and assured supporters that Chu would continue such programs and work hard to improve the competitiveness of the county after it is upgraded into Sinbei City in December.
The outgoing commissioner declined to confirm whether or not he would serve as campaign manager for Chu’s election team, but said he will continue to work as a “volunteer” and campaign for Chu.
Chu thanked Chou for his full support and putting party unity first. He also said the two men would unite during the election campaign to stop rivals from using their previous competition as a smear campaign against him.
Elections for the heads of five special municipalities will take place on Nov. 27 in Taipei City, Sinbei City (the upgraded Taipei County), Greater Taichung (a merger of Taichung City and Taichung County), Greater Tainan (a merger of Tainan City and Tainan County) and Greater Kaohsiung (a merger of Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County).
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater