Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) yesterday rebutted a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) allegation that the city did not participate in the World Expo in Shanghai because of differences in “political ideology.”
“If the organizers of the World Expo had invited every local government in Taiwan, you could hold me responsible for the city’s absence. However, the organizers did not invite me at all,” Chen said, adding that she did not have any channel to directly talk to Beijing, either.
Chen made the remarks on the council floor in response to KMT Kaohsiung City Councilor Wang Ling-chiao’s (王齡嬌) criticism that the city government failed to raise funds to build an exhibition hall to showcase the city’s attractions as Taipei did.
Chen also defended the city’s debt status after a magazine survey showed that Kaohsiung had the highest debt per capita among the nation’s 25 cities and counties.
The Chinese-language Common Wealth magazine said on Thursday that Kaohsiung’s debt per capita hit NT$95,190 (US$2,900), followed by Taipei’s NT$65,000 and Yilan’s NT$43,000.
“The city government took out loans legally and reasonably,” Chen told reporters after the council session, adding that the city government had invested heavily in public construction projects since Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) was mayor, including the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit System and the sewage system.
Lei Chung-dar (雷仲達), director-general of the city’s Finance Bureau, said the city government invested NT$26 billion in the MRT system, roughly NT$1 billion on dredging rivers, NT$1.5 billion to construct the Kaohsiung Arena, NT$1.2 billion to build the World Games Main Stadium and NT$10 billion to build a sewage system since 2004.
Lei said there had been little growth in the city’s annual tax revenue in recent years, but the city government had never stopped investing in public infrastructure.
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
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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