Hillary Rodham Clinton defies stereotyping.
She's one of the world's most famous women, and the only first lady ever to be elected to public office. On Tuesday, she defeated Republican Representative Rick Lazio to take another step away from scandal and into history.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Her critics and supporters agree she could become the nation's first female president, an ambition she denies having. Indeed, at her victory speech, her words were all about New York.
``I promise you tonight, I will reach across party lines to bring progress for all of New York's families,'' the 53-year-old said. ``Today we voted as Democrats and Republicans; tomorrow, we begin again as New Yorkers.''
Clinton is an intellectual who attended Wellesley and Yale; a woman who describes her 1950s childhood as idyllic but rejected the stay-at-home mom route; and a women's rights advocate who stuck by her philandering husband.
Many of the contradictions are rooted in her childhood.
Born in 1947, the eldest of three, she grew up in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge.
Her father, a drapery business owner, was a devout Methodist who prayed by his bedside every night. Her mother stayed at home, and once made Hillary face a bully, saying, ``There's no room for cowards in this house!''
A church group led Clinton ``to the world beyond our all-white middle-class suburb,'' arranging for her and other teenagers to baby-sit for migrant farm workers' families and to meet civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
After graduating from Wellesley in 1969, she went on to Yale Law School, adding a year to her studies to learn about child development and work for the Children's Defense Fund.
Clinton spent 1974 in Washington, researching constitutional grounds for impeaching President Richard Nixon. She then moved to Arkansas to join her soon-to-be husband, Bill Clinton, whom she'd met at Yale.
She worked for a prominent Little Rock law firm, but her proudest achievement as the governor's wife was leading a school reform commission.
As first lady, Clinton's biggest failure was health care reform, an initiative the president asked her to head but one that Congress and the public soundly rejected.
As a candidate for the Senate, her decision to stay married was questioned.
At a debate last month, she explained it this way: ``For my entire life, I've worked to make sure women had the choices they could make in their own lives that worked for them. I can't talk about anybody else's choice. I can only say mine are rooted in my religious faith, in my strong sense of family, and in what I believe is right.''
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique