Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday vowed to set up a presidential office in southern Taiwan within three months of her swearing in if she wins the presidential election next year.
“The Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] has been in power for seven years, yet the progress in balancing regional development [has been slow],” Tsai told a conference on the development of southern Taiwan in Kaohsiung. “When the DPP is in power, we will find an idle space and turn it into the southern presidential office, to lead the government’s revival of the south.”
Once in power, the DPP would ask state-run businesses to work with the private sector to invest in green energy and marine industries, as well as work with local governments in land development projects, Tsai said.
Meanwhile, state-run research and academic institutes should create research centers in the south to stop local talents from leaving, Tsai said.
“The government should take the lead in cutting the ‘Taipei-centric’ view to enhance a more balanced regional development,” she said.
On the sidelines of the conference, Tsai said in response to media queries for comment on President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) renewed criticism on her cross-strait policy platform of “maintaining the status quo” that the president should have better things to do.
“I do not know if he is asking the question for political manipulation or for the good of Taiwan. If he’s truly concerned about making Taiwan a better place, he should stop talking like a broken record, repeating the same question everyday,” Tsai said. “There is only about a year left in his term as president. He has not done much for the country in the past seven years; he should seize the year to do more things, so that people might have a better impression of him when he leaves office.”
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