The latest poll from the Taiwan Indicator Survey Research (TISR) suggested that support for ceasing the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), increased by 4 percentage points from a previous poll conducted in March.
TISR general manager Tai Li-an (戴立安) said that the percentage of people opposed to completing the nuclear plant increased from 58 percent in March to 62 percent last month.
The government’s efforts to persuade the public that the plant is safe are not only ineffective, they are actually causing more people to be worried, Tai said.
On the issue of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s and Taiwan Power Co’s joint efforts to persuade the public of the overall safety of nuclear power, the latest poll showed that 73.6 percent of respondents were not swayed by the government’s arguments.
Only 9.1 percent indicated that they have changed their minds, 4 percent of whom said that they had gone from questioning to flat-out opposition. Only 1.9 percent said they were persuaded by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, the survey showed.
The poll also showed that Ma’s low public approval ratings have not rebounded, with only 19 percent of respondents satisfied with his administration and 73.4 percent dissatisfied.
Meanwhile, only 24.9 percent said they have faith in the government, while 60.2 percent have no confidence in the government.
The survey was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday through random telephone samplings of 1,005 residents who were older than 20 spread across the nation, Tai said.
The poll has a 95 percent confidence interval and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas