Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) yesterday apologized to the nation for the government’s failure to carry out its campaign promise to immediately improve living standards after taking office.
“I apologize for disappointing those who expected their living conditions to change for the better immediately after we took office,” Liu said in response to a question by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) in the legislature.
Liu said people’s living standards had not improved from six months ago and vowed to redouble his efforts to carry out the president’s campaign promise.
The question came in response to Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming’s (尹啟銘) comments on Monday, when he said at the legislature that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) campaign promise to “turn things around right away” was just a campaign slogan.
The premier said he did not agree with Yiin, adding that the minister’s remark was “inappropriate.”
Liu said it was normal for Ma’s campaign to have used positive campaign language after doing careful evaluation.
He said, however, that the global economy had changed drastically since Ma came into office.
Asked by Tsai what had improved since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) came to power, the premier told the legislator that the new government had more integrity than the previous administration.
Meanwhile, the premier said the Ministry of Economic Affairs would strive to help small and medium-sized enterprises invest in emerging markets like the Middle East, Brazil and Russia to help them weather the economic downturn.
He said the government was also ready to encourage banks to provide funding to support domestic firms.
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