"I had a horrible night last night," goes one joke in America this week. "I dreamed aliens landed and said, `Take me to your leader.' I didn't know what to do."
Jokes are keeping spirits up as the see-saw presidential election tests the country's capacity for melodrama to the limit. The mood has switched from excitement, to humor, to suspense and now to embarrassment.
In Florida, though, there is a deepening rancor. The state seems as angry and divided today by the legal battles to decide who should become president as it was a generation ago when the war raged in Vietnam. The atmosphere is reflected in the phone-in radio shows and the e-mail "chat rooms."
Comments over the past 24 hours include: "Maybe Florida should put candidates' pictures on the ballot like they do in the Third World," "Bush is just too dumb to be president" and "Gore and the Crybabies -- it sounds like some clunky rock group."
Delores Panter, 70, of Oklahoma, said: "Everybody's talking about it. Some want Bush to win. Others want Gore. The Lord will choose the one he wants. I'd like him to decide quickly."
Mark Hartshorne, 35, of Tulsa, Arizona said: "It's an embarrassment. We're supposed to be the strongest nation in the world and we can't even count."
Throughout America, in diners, offices and homes, one phrase sounds out: "Enough already." Safe in the knowledge that neither candidate will make a noticeable difference to the country when elected, most Americans now want their regular television programs back and the world spotlight turned off.
Many just want it all to end and have lost patience with the voters in Palm Beach, who claimed that a confusing ballot paper meant that they voted for the arch-conservative Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore.
"If you are old enough to vote, you are old enough to read the ballot," said John Rieder, 49, in Wisconsin.
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