Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu, who ran a half-page advertisement in yesterday's Chinese-language China Times, told reporters in Taipei County that the public, including the party's presidential hopefuls, had the right to ask the aspirants to be transparent in their use of campaign funds and public resources, which should be scrutinized publicly.
"If they want to use the money for personal purposes, they should take it from their own pockets," she said.
Lu was referring to criticism from DDP and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators of Premier Su Tseng-chang (
DPP Legislator Hsieh Hsin-ni (
Hsieh enjoys a close relationship with former premier Frank Hsieh (
KMT legislators including Ting Shou-chung (
The Chinese-language United Daily News estimated that Cabinet agencies had spent NT$30 million to NT$40 million printing pamphlets promoting government policies and buying air time to promote achievements made under Su's leadership.
Lu said she had paid for the newspaper advertisement with her own money and with some donations from supporters.
The ad, titled "Together we create Taiwan's pride and happiness," said that a "different Annette Lu" was bound to "create a different Taiwan."
Meanwhile, Lu explained the reason why she declined to attend a TV debate organized by a pro-independence group on Saturday, saying she simply could not attend all the events organized by different private groups.
However, she said she would participate in debates organized by the DPP. The four contenders agreed on Monday that the party would hold at least two public debates, scheduled for April 14 and April 28, to give the candidates a chance to make their positions public.
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