People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
The report said Soong fell to his knees before Chang when the conversation came to a water-resources budget slashed by the central government, but it did not say whether Soong was asking or apologizing to Chang for something. Apparently stricken with grief, Soong criticized the budget cut as a shameful act, the report said.
PHOTO: CHUANG YU-FENG, TAIPEI TIMES
Both the blue and green camps are wooing the independent Chang's support in next year's presidential election.
Chang is a former member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) but was expelled from the party in 1997 for running in the commissioner's election in defiance of party orders. Chang has since built a formidable power base in Yunlin.
Commenting on Soong's kneeling down, a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) official said yesterday that Soong was at his wits end.
"Since the most recent poll showed the DPP's support rate is on the rise, while the Lien-Soong ticket's support rate is suffering, Soong's falling on his knees simply showed that he was at his wits end," DPP deputy secretary-general Lee Chin-yung (
Gao Jyh-peng (
"Facing mounting calls for Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test