President Chen Shui-bian (
"I think everyone [in the media] is being too imaginative. Some people may think this way, but I do not have such a plan," Chen said in response to press enquiries yesterday morning.
Chen was referring to a report in the Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday, which said he had decided to ask Su to step down before the DPP's presidential primary.
The report said Chen would do this in a bid to allow Su, DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun, former premier Frank Hsieh (
None of the four, however, has made it clear whether they intend to stand for nomination.
While the party has yet to finalize the date of its primary, officials have been mulling a combined legislative and presidential primary in May.
An anonymous source cited by the report said that Chen plans to choose one of Presidential Secretary-General Mark Chen (陳唐山), Secretary-General of the National Security Council Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) and former premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) as the new premier.
"This is simply speculation without any evidence," said Cabinet Spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (
"We have just finished the mayoral elections for Taipei and Kaohsiung. People expect us to work hard instead of discussing elections all the time," Cheng said.
Although Chen dismissed the report, some DPP legislators yesterday expressed their support for the idea of Su running for the primary without simultaneously being premier.
On the other hand, DPP Legislator Hsieh Hsin-ni (
DPP Legislator Lin Yu-sheng (
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