President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) delivered a speech at a meeting of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Standing Committee in Taipei yesterday, where he commemorated the victims of two major disasters in recent weeks.
A TransAsia Airways plane crash in Penghu killed 48 people and injured 15 on July 23 and gas pipeline blasts in Greater Kaohsiung on Thursday night last week killed 30 people and injured 310.
“With pain and solemnness, I want to express the grief in my heart for those who lost their lives. However, behind the pain, we have also seen love and its extraordinary power,” Ma said. “All Taiwanese, whether in this land or abroad, no matter their ethnic group, no matter what political party they support, all of us empathize with Kaohsiung. Everyone offers their prayers, and at that moment, everyone was a Kaohsiung resident.”
Ma said that many individuals and companies have made generous contributions and offered accommodation to those affected, and he was heartened to see many young people rounding up friends to work as volunteers helping city residents return to normal life.
“Even big storms must end sometime, and suffering will be put behind us,” Ma said. “Let us help each other to walk out of this painful time. Through disasters, we can see where hope is.”
“Let us pray that Heaven will bless Kaohsiung and bring peace and security to Taiwan,” he said.
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:
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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