Catholic Cardinal Paul Shan (單國璽) said yesterday he would like to act as a go-between if ruling and opposition leaders were willing to engage in dialogue, because he hoped that "things can be worked out peacefully."
However, the cardinal said he doubted "the two of them" -- President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen and Ma had a rare dialogue in early April without reaching any major consensus. Since then, the president has been engaged in "damage control" as a string of corruption allegations have been leveled at close aides and members of his family.
Shan, who was recently diagnosed with pulmonary cancer, said he was worried by a rising tide of radical calls for the president to step down, voiced by -- among others -- former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Shih Ming-teh (
Ma has voiced his support for Shih's campaign and encouraged party members to join a planned sit-in protest, and the DPP has countered with a national campaign to retrieve the KMT's "ill-gotten" assets, creating more turmoil in an already tense society.
Shan said he respects his "good friend" Master Hsing Yun (星雲法師), a Buddhist leader, for issuing a statement calling on the president to voluntarily step down to prevent further social unrest and "maintain his dignity as a decent national leader."
However, Shan said he would not wade into politics.
"Political matters should be left to political figures," he 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