The KMT and PFP announced yesterday the heads of eight committees that will be in charge of coordinating the alliance's bid for the presidential election next March.
The eight committees, each in charge of different aspects of the campaign, are slated to convene their first meeting tomorrow. The meeting is expected to announce that KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) will head the joint bid with PFP counterpart James Soong (宋楚瑜) as his running mate.
Each committee is to be co-convened by a member of each party. Both the KMT and the PFP disclosed their respective lists after holding meetings yesterday.
The KMT-PFP Alliance Committee, made up of the eight sub-committees and members-at-large, will be chaired by both Lien and Soong, with Soong acting as the chief convener of the sub-committees.
"Do not associate personnel on these committees as a divvying up of spoils and power," Soong said after announcing the list. "The purpose of having these committees is mainly to provide a responsible mechanism for the cooperation of the two political parties."
Soong added that the alliance would not rule out the possibility of establishing additional committees on issues such women's issues and aboriginal affairs.
KMT Vice Chairman Vincent Siew (
"Chairman Lien Chan had extended an invitation to Siew more than once to either be one of the committee co-conveners or members-at-large, but Siew refused to take up any post," KMT spokesman Alex Tsai (蔡正元) said.
"Siew however has promised that he will help with the campaign," Tsai said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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