In response to lawyer Wellington Koo’s (顧立雄) announced intention to join the Taipei mayoral race, Former Taipei EasyCard Corp chairman Sean Lien (連勝文) yesterday declined to confirm whether he would run as a candidate.
Lien’s special assistant William Hsu (徐弘庭) said that Lien is not in the country at the moment, and that he has not yet decided whether he should run in the mayoral election.
Lien, son of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰), is seen as the most competitive candidate in the Taipei mayoral race in the pan-blue camp.
He has been unable to make up his mind due to health reasons and a shooting incident in 2010, in which he was shot in the cheek during election campaign activities in New Taipei City (新北市).
Sean Lien has said that his family opposed his involvement in politics following the incident, and acknowledged that his personal safety is the main concern regarding his mayoral bid.
So far, there are four politicians who have declared their intention to join the race in the KMT, including legislators Alex Tsai (蔡正元) and Ting Shou-chung (丁守中), Taipei City councilors Yang Shi-chiu (楊實秋) and Chin Hui-chu (秦慧珠).
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday that the KMT adopts a primary mechanism to determine its candidates in major elections.
When asked whether he would support Sean Lien as his successor, Hau said he would support the KMT’s final candidate in the Taipei mayoral election.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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