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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45338410#45338410
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TAIPEI, Taiwan?? It started early last month, when a small Taiwanese boy handed over his coin-filled piggy bank to the opposition candidate for president, only to have the government declare the donation illegal because it violated a prohibition on minors' involvement in political campaigns.
That gave rise to the Democratic Progressive Party's "Three Little Pigs" movement, which is now sweeping this island of 23 million people.
With a nod to the fairy tale, the DPP has been handing out hamster-sized plastic piggy banks in shiny oranges and reds. The idea is that by banding together to make small donations, tens of thousands of economically challenged workers and farmers can overcome the big bad wolf of Taiwanese corporate power and defeat incumbent Ma Ying-jeou and his supposedly capitalist cronies in the Jan. 14 presidential poll.
The piggy campaign is a salient reminder that not all Taiwanese politics revolves around the issue of the island's complex relations with China, from which it split amid civil war in 1949. While that issue tends to garner the most interest abroad, Taiwanese themselves are usually more concerned with bread and butter questions such as wages, inflation and jobs.
Taiwan's economy has fared relatively well in recent years, avoiding the slow growth syndrome that has afflicted most of the West. But complaints over rising income inequality have been mounting, fueled by a residential building boom that seems largely reserved for high-wage earners and a shift in the labor market that appears to punish relatively unskilled or undereducated workers.
That has provided a big political opening for Tsai Ing-wen, the 54-year-old DPP presidential candidate, and the star of the suddenly trendy piggy bank campaign.
Robin Hood heroine?
Scion of a wealthy family, the soft-spoken Tsai has been transformed almost overnight from a wonkish intellectual whose privileged background allowed her to study abroad, into a Robin Hood-like heroine committed to lifting the poor from the hardships of life.
"She is so extraordinary," said 63-year-old welfare recipient Bei Ling, who lives with her husband in the Taipei working class suburb of Banciao. "Whenever we see her on TV we are moved to tears."
Even Ma supporters ? and latest polls still give him a razor-thin lead over Tsai ? acknowledge that he can't compete with her in the garnering-love-from-the-masses department.
Since taking office 3 1/2 years ago, the 61-year-old Ma has won plaudits for helping Taiwan navigate through the global financial crisis, but has been widely criticized for his perceived inability to address the interests of blue-collar workers, farmers and others among the less well-off, and for his seeming lack of human empathy. Like Tsai he comes from a well-connected family whose privileged status helped underwrite his foreign education.
Story: Analysis: China watches nervously as Taiwan election nearsOnly on msnbc.com
Tsai has worked hard at exploiting Ma's supposed weaknesses.
Clad in simple clothes and sometimes wearing a farmer's traditional straw hat, she has visited countless rural villages and working class districts across the island, chatting with farmers and laborers in front of countless television cameras, in an attempt to burnish her populist credentials.
Now, with the piggy campaign in full swing, she is inundated almost everywhere she goes with supporters presenting her with piggy banks stuffed with modest amounts of cash.
Government waste in spotlight
Tsai's cause is being helped by mounting public criticism of government waste, which resurfaced late last month following revelations that officials spent $7 million on a glitzy National Day production that that few people paid very much attention to.
Political commentator Hu Wen-hui of the pro-DPP Liberty Times newspaper wrote that with scandals like this, it's no surprise that Ma is locked in an extremely tight race.
"Millions of piggies are showing their anger against the Ma government," Hu wrote. "They embody a demand for revolutionary change."
Premier Wu Den-yih, Ma's vice-presidential running mate, said the piggies' innocent image did not reflect the true face of the DPP and its well-born presidential candidate.
"You don't turn a remote person into an approachable one just by giving her a piggy," he said.
Former DPP lawmaker Lin Cho-shui disagreed, saying the success of the piggy campaign reflected mounting popular unease over income inequality and rising unemployment.
"With middle and worker-class livelihoods under threat," he said, "it has fed into a collective social anxiety."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45283966/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/
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GENEVA (AP) ? The International Diabetes Federation predicts that one in 10 adults could have diabetes by 2030, according to their latest statistics.
In a report issued on Monday, the advocacy group estimated that 552 million people would have diabetes in the next two decades based on things like aging and demographic changes. Currently, the group says that one in about eight people have diabetes.
The figure includes both types of diabetes as well as cases that are undiagnosed. The group expects the number of cases to jump by 90 percent even in Africa, where infectious diseases have previously been the top killer. Without including the impact of increasing obesity, the International Diabetes Federation said its figures were conservative.
According to the World Health Organization, there are about 346 million people worldwide with diabetes, with more than 80 percent of deaths occurring in developing countries. The agency projects diabetes deaths will double by 2030 and said the International Diabetes Federation's prediction was possible.
"It's a credible figure," said Gojka Roglic, head of WHO's diabetes unit. "But whether or not it's correct, we can't say."
Roglic said the projected future rise in diabetes cases was because of aging rather than the obesity epidemic. Most cases of diabetes are Type 2, the kind that mainly hits people in middle age, and is linked to weight gain and a sedentary lifestyle.
Roglic said a substantial number of future diabetes cases were preventable. "It's worrying because these people will have an illness which is serious, debilitating, and shortens their lives," she said. "But it doesn't have to happen if we take the right interventions."
___
Online:
www.idf.org
www.who.int
(This version CORRECTS Corrects global estimate to 552 million instead of 522 million in headlines and 2nd paragraph, adds that current diabetes estimate is one in eight people)
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HASTINGS, Mich. (AP) ? Police investigating an alarm at a Michigan restaurant used a thermal imaging device to find a fleeing suspect hiding in a pile of leaves.
The Grand Rapids Press reports (http://bit.ly/vTxHRJ ) that when the man was discovered concealed under leaves in a bush in Hastings, near Grand Rapids, he ran off again ? and jumped into a river.
Police arrested the suspect after he went to a nearby motel to change his clothes. Officers found a backpack belonging to the man that contained waste from methamphetamine production and say he likely was making meth in the motel room.
The man is being held on a probation violation. He is expected to face drug charges.
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