Cooperation in the 2004 presidential elections will not be the main focus of forthcoming talks between KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), said KMT Secretary-General Lin Fong-cheng (林豐正) yesterday.
"The focus of the talks will be Taiwan's economy and what urgent steps we can take to salvage it, to improve people's lives," said Lin responding to questions from reporters at KMT headquarters in Taipei.
"Although topics in relation to 2004 presidential election will be touched on [during the talk], they will not be the main focus of the Lien-Soong meet."
A new date is yet to be set for the talks, which Soong announced at a pre-election rally last week. They were scheduled to take place yesterday but were postponed at the request of the KMT on Saturday.
Lin yesterday stressed that both Lien and Soong would definitely meet. "But because [the KMT] has been busy after the election, we have had to set a different date and time when both Lien and Soong have time to meet."
"People are expecting talks between Lien and Soong," Lin said. "We will arrange it quickly."
Lin added that talk of the presidential elections "may not be important [in the Lien-Soong meet], because the question of who will run for the presidency and who will run for the vice presidency is not an issue that can simply be decided by the two of them," Lin said.
In response to the postponement of the meet, Soong yesterday said that he does not mind because it allows him to have more time to gather grassroots public opinion to find measures that can aid the public welfare.
Meanwhile, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
"I would like to make clear here that my wife did not give an exclusive interview with any media nor offer her position concerning the 2004 presidential election," Ma said in a radio interview.
"My wife holds the same point of view as I do regarding the 2004 presidential election," he said.
"The priority for me now is to do my mayoral job well and not to think of anything else."
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
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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