Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said that while she understood some of the criticism leveled at the party by Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財), the criticism had been made in an “overly emotional” fashion.
On Thursday, the two-term DPP mayor said that since he lost the party primaries in May, he had faced a series of attacks and criticism by party members on TV talk shows over his record in office.
Addressing the Tainan City Council, an emotional Hsu told reporters that “no other democratic party in the world attacked its compatriots like the [DPP]” and likened the opposition party to a mafia.
In response, Tsai said that while the comments were regrettable, she recognized that Hsu made them in response to being verbally attacked on national TV by certain people.
“I can understand his feelings … and why he made the comments,” she said during a campaign stop in Taipei County.
Hsu has been under increasing pressure recently to clarify whether he will make an independent run for Greater Tainan mayor after losing the primaries to DPP legislator William Lai (賴清德).
A group of supporters in Tainan County believed to have close connections with the incumbent mayor has twice given dates when they expected Hsu to publicly announce his intentions. However, those two dates — the latest was yesterday — have come and gone.
Local media yesterday reported that Hsu was “drawing a blank,” unable to come to a decision.
“I [realize] there are limits to my abilities and I can’t see the future clearly,” Hsu told CNA.
He also refused to say when he would make a public announcement on the matter.
Lai, currently traveling in the US, was not available for comment.
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