Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General Lee Shu-chuan’s (李四川) recent visit to a party heavyweight in Yunlin County was aimed at coordinating legislative election matters, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday.
“This issue was reported on by the media last week,” Chu said when asked to comment on a Storm Media Group article published yesterday. “People should give themselves a break and only sensationalize each topic once.”
The article said that Lee’s visit to former Yunlin County commissioner Chang Jung-wei (張榮味) on Aug. 22 had been to sound out the possibility of Chu pairing up with Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) in the presidential race.
It said that Chang, a close acquaintance of Wang, had flatly dismissed the idea because a Chu- Wang ticket was not a winnable option and would not be welcomed by the majority of voters.
Chang also reportedly shrugged off Lee’s proposal that Wang remain a legislator-at-large, which he said would not be conducive to either the KMT winning the presidential race or maintaining its legislative majority.
Pressed about the subjects discussed at the Aug. 22 meeting, Chu said he did not need an intermediary to pass on messages to Wang because they always meet in person or speak by telephone when they need to discuss something.
“The visit was aimed at coordinating matters regarding the Jan. 16 legislative elections,” Chu said.
The Storm Media report renewed rumors that Chu, who also serves as New Taipei City mayor, has been exploring the possibility of replacing Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) as KMT presidential candidate.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) last week reported a “credible anonymous source” as saying that two senior KMT officials had been sounding out several party heavyweights about entering the Jan. 16 race as Chu’s running mate.
Wang dismissed the Storm Media story as “lacking substantiality and representativeness,” but he dodged questions about a Chu ticket or seeking a legislators-at-large seat, saying: “I don’t know who said this. You go find out.”
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:
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
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