President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said that it would have negative consequences for former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) medical parole if she were to respond to his claim that she has cut a deal with Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) to renew the Democratic Progressive Party’s endorsement for the Nov. 24 Taipei mayoral election.
In “The New Saga of Yung the Brave” (新勇哥物語), a Line chat group Chen has set up, he said that Ko and Ko’s wife, Peggy Chen (陳珮琪), have met with Tsai at the presidential residence.
There are no rules requiring a primary for the Taipei mayoral race and the DPP candidate is directly nominated by the party’s chairperson, Tsai, Chen Shui-bian said in the group, which he named after a dog he kept when he was president.
At the meeting, Tsai told Ko she had decided that the DPP would team up with him for the election, as it did in 2014, Chen Shui-bian said, adding that Tsai’s previous remark that “if [the DPP] loses the election, it could end up finishing third” was meant as a smokescreen for her plan.
The source of the rumor is likely Chen Shui-bian’s conversation with friends on social media and people should not to blow it out of proportion, Tsai said yesterday, as she continued her visit to Hualien County to promote tourism there in the aftermath of the Feb. 6 magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
It would be inappropriate for her to respond to the rumor in her capacity of president, as it would “politicize the issue” and “have consequences for former president Chen [Shui-bian’s] medical parole,” Tsai said.
Asked to confirm whether the DPP’s private opinion polls on the Taipei mayoral election included Premier William Lai (賴清德) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) as potential candidates, Tsai said such rumors are not entirely accurate.
The DPP will disclose its plans for the Taipei mayoral election once its Electoral Strategy Committee has completed an analysis of the different scenarios, finished discussions with “other political parties” and issued a formal recommendation to party headquarters, she said
Ko yesterday told media that “it was Yung the Brave who made the disclosure,” rather than Chen Shui-bian.
“Why are you asking me? You should be asking Yung the Brave,” 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:
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