Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is scheduled to officially register as a presidential candidate today and to formally begin her quest to become the first female president in Taiwan and bring the DPP back to power.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is seeking re-election, registered on Monday, while the third presidential aspirant, People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), is scheduled to register for the Jan. 14 presidential election tomorrow.
Tsai is scheduled to make a major speech at her campaign headquarters in Banciao (板橋), New Taipei City (新北市), at 9:40am before completing the registration process at the Central Election Commission with DPP vice presidential candidate Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) at 10:30am.
Tsai has become increasingly confident of winning the presidential election after recent polls showed her leading Ma.
According to the latest prediction of xfuture.org, an electronic exchange at the Center for Prediction Markets at National Chengchi University, which uses a methodology similar to that used in futures markets, Tsai is increasing her lead over Ma both in the predicted vote share and the possibility of winning.
The results, released yesterday, showed that Tsai would receive a predicted vote share of 48.6 percent, 4.5 percentage higher than Ma’s 44.1, percent while Soong received 8.2 percent.
In terms of possibility of winning, Tsai also led Ma by 7.8 percent, with 48.8 percent to Ma’s 41 percent. Soong is at 11 percent.
In another survey released yesterday conducted by Taiwan Thinktank, Tsai also led Ma by 0.9 percent, with 39.6 percent support to Ma’s 38.7 percent. Soong received 11 percent, while 10 percent remained undecided.
A special team from the National Security Bureau will take over security for Tsai and Su from today until Jan. 15, one day after the election.
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