The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate for Taipei mayor, Ting Shou-chung (丁守中), yesterday apologized for remarks made on Monday that have been seen as discriminatory about single men who live alone, saying that he only meant to encourage government agencies to use big data in fighting crime.
“Regarding my comments yesterday, which some people felt constituted labeling and stereotyping and have angered certain groups of people, I hereby solemnly offer my apology,” the former lawmaker said at a news conference at the party’s Taipei headquarters.
He said he just wanted to help strengthen the nation’s safety net for women and young children through the analysis of scientific statistics and the data he cited were from the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
Photo: CNA
Ting on Monday told a news conference that big data analysis showed that there were six traits that indicated a person was more likely to become a child abuser or murderer: being male, unmarried, unemployed, living alone, lacking intimate partners or having a poor relationship with others.
“These men are society’s tickling time bombs and should be subject to preventive supervision,” he said.
New Power Party Taipei city councilor candidate Wu Cheng (吳崢) said Ting needed to apologize for carelessly labeling people as a potential criminal simply because they are single or unemployed.
Ting yesterday announced 10 policy proposals aimed at helping women and children, including a NT$50,000 subsidy for new mothers’ postpartum care.
The city should increase the number of babysitters who provide in-home care and also improve the quality of their service, he said.
A day should be designated each month as a parent-child day to encourage quality family time, with parents and children given free access to Taipei’s MRT metropolitan railway system and public facilities for the entire day, he said.
If he wins, he would also seek to help women start micro-businesses as a way to increase the number of women in the workforce, 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