Responding to the DPP government's plan to promote Hakka culture and improve minority welfare, grassroots leaders from the KMT yesterday said they will support President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in next year's presidential election.
"I am a 60-year-old man and I know how our residents in the Hakka areas sincerely appreciate the DPP government's efforts over the past three years," Sanyi Township chief Tang Shen-yuan (
"I completely agree with President Chen's idea, and therefore I will give my full support to help him win his re-election bid even though the KMT may expel me," Tang said.
Chen yesterday presided over a ceremony marking the transition of the National Lien-Ho Institute of Technology to the status of a university -- the first university to open in Miaoli County, where most residents speak Hakka.
Before the ceremony, Chen had a closed-door gathering with the county's township chiefs, including eight KMT members and one independent.
According to Tang, Chen stressed that his administration has realized all his promises to Hakka communities, such as establishing the Hakka TV channel, the Cabinet's Hakka Affairs Committee, and the first university in Miaoli. The president vowed to continue to enhance the government's efforts in promoting Hakka residents' welfare.
Miaoli County Commissioner Fu Hsueh-peng (
The president said that the increasing number of universities in rural areas around the island is a tangible and direct response by the government to the will of the public. It also shows the concern his administration has for the welfare of those living in underprivileged areas, he said.
The president spoke at the site of expansion work at the institute, which is part of the changes that will result in the facility being designated as a university on Friday. The school will henceforth be know as the National United University.
Also established Friday will be National Ilan University and National Taitung University -- upgraded from the National Ilan Institute of Technology and National Taitung Teachers College, respectively -- to serve as the first universities in the eastern counties of Ilan and Taitung, Chen said.
The president said that the establishment of the three national universities fulfills a need in the areas, which did not have a single university, in spite of the fact that the number of colleges and universities nationwide has expanded to 135 in 2001 from 67 in 1996.
Currently a technological institute with some 250 teaching staff and 6,000 students at four campuses, National United University will have five institutes or graduate schools established within two years on its newly acquired land that encompasses nearly eight hectares.
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
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
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