Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) policy white paper for his mayoral election campaign was published yesterday.
The paper, titled Our Blueprint, includes an assessment of Ko’s administrative performance over the past four years, categorized into 10 main aspects, including public housing and childcare services, transportation, smart city, education, culture and healthcare for elderly residents, as well as his policy views for the future.
Ko’s campaign office said that while it had posted Ko’s political views on its Web site, usually only people who are very interested will search the Internet to read it, so it had printed the white paper in the form of a magazine with pictures and is distributing it for free at bookstores and coffee shops.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Ko said that policy white papers are usually printed as a book, but people are less willing to read such a thing and it would likely end up in the trash, so printing it as a thin magazine might encourage more people to peruse it over coffee.
In related news, reporters yesterday asked Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) whether US investigative author Ethan Gutmann’s accusations that Ko was involved in organ harvesting in China have affected people’s willingness to register as an organ donor.
Gutmann on Tuesday last week said at a news conference in Taipei that Ko had told him he knew about the harvesting of Falun Gong members’ organs.
Despite rumors that many people have called the Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center to inquire about withdrawing as organ donors due to the controversy, data did not show a significant number of withdrawals, Chen said.
Monthly registrations were more than 3,900, while monthly withdrawals were about 50, he said.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
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