Scores of students completed a marathon "kneel to pray for the nation" activity in front of the Presidential Office yesterday to lend support to the ongoing sit-in campaign to pressure President Chen Shui-bian (
Around 100 students, who knelt around an image of Taiwan shaped out of candles, started the 921-minute "kneel-in" at 9:21pm on Thursday night and ended at 12:56pm yesterday.
The students said they crossed their fingers and prayed for the nation and to try to "awaken" the embattled president in the hope that he would answer a spate of corruption and embezzlement allegations against himself, members of his family and senior aides within the 921 minutes.
PHOTO: SUNG CHIH-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Several students were unable to sustain the kneeling position during the long "kneel-in" and started to collapse around 8am.
Shih Ming-teh (
He said the fragrant flower is indigenous to Taiwan and represents freshness and vibrancy.
Shih, who was imprisoned for 25 years as a prisoner of conscience during the authoritarian era under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration, said that collapsing was part of developing "tenacity."
He added that people should always stand up after they take a fall.
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:
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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