Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) yesterday said he remains open to cooperation between the KMT and the People First Party (PFP) in next year’s presidential election, adding that he would “not give up until the end.”
Both parties are striving for the good of Taiwan and “the vendettas of the last generation” should be resolved through “sincere communication,” Chu said, adding that he has done a great deal of work “under the table,” which “must remain unknown” to the public.
Chu made the remarks in response to reporters’ questions regarding comments made on Monday by PFP presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜), who said he has been “pining for the word” on a pan-blue alliance, but that the issue “depends on the KMT.”
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
According to the latest survey of presidential candidates released by the Taiwan Thinktank on Monday, Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) maintains her lead (47 percent) over both Soong and KMT presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), with Hung at 16 percent and Soong at 13 percent.
Soong yesterday observed World Car-Free Day by riding public transportation, using the occasion to reiterate his stance on nuclear energy.
“A nuclear-free home is our common goal,” he said, promising, if elected, to conduct a new round of safety inspections at the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮).
Meanwhile, Hung yesterday unveiled her public housing policy.
If elected, she said she would dedicate an annual budget of between NT$20 billion and NT$25 billion (US$606.6 million and US$758.2 million) to set up a “National Housing Service,” which would provide housing subsidies to families with at least one income-earner regardless of the number of dependents.
Applicant priority would be determined through a system of eligibility “points” rather than lottery, with applicants’ personal accounts in the national labor pension fund providing the down payment for mortgages, Hung 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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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