President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) ranked ninth on Forbes magazine’s list of the most powerful women in the world, moving up 28 spots from last year’s ranking.
Forbes highlighted that Tsai became Taiwan’s first female and unmarried leader in 2016, and was re-elected last year with more than 57 percent of the popular vote.
The magazine said her re-election was a “rebuke to Beijing’s efforts to control the island.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
Tsai has made protocol-breaking overtures to the US, which has created tensions with China, it said.
Forbes commended her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and her efforts in stimulating the economy with initiatives focused on biotechnology, defense and green energy to make Taiwan “an indispensable member of the world.”
Tsai made the list for the sixth-straight year since her first listing in 2016, when she was ranked 17th. Last year, she was 37th.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) president and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰), who was born in Tainan and migrated to the US as a child, ranked 49th on this year’s list.
Under Su, who trained as an electrical engineer, AMD’s stock price has risen more than 25-fold, Forbes said, adding that the company made one of the greatest turnarounds in the technology sector in the past few years.
US novelist and philanthropist Mackenzie Scott topped the list, after she in 2019 pledged to give away half of her wealth.
Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has thus far donated about US$8 billion to more than 500 nonprofit organizations, including US$2.74 billion granted to 286 groups in June, the magazine said.
US Vice President Kamala Harris ranked second, after she early last year was the first black and Asian-American woman to assume the second-highest office in the country, it said.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS