Taiwan new President Tsai Ing-wen(R) waves as outgoing president Ma Ying-jeou (L) looks on during the inauguration ceremony in Taipei on May 20, 2016. Credit: AFP/Sam Yeh
BEIJING — China said Saturday that communications with Taiwan had been suspended after the island’s new government failed to acknowledge the concept that there is only “one China”.
Relations between the two sides have grown increasingly frosty since President Tsai Ing-wen won Taiwan’s leadership by a landslide in January and took office in May, ending eight years of rapprochement.
Beijing and Taipei have held regular, official communications since 2014, but that has now stopped, according to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
“The bilateral communication mechanism has been suspended,” TAO spokesman An Fengshan said on its website.
Although Taiwan is self-ruling after splitting with the mainland in 1949 following a civil war, it has never formally declared independence and Beijing still sees it as part of its territory awaiting reunification.
Beijing is highly suspicious of Tsai, whose Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which replaced the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) party in government, is traditionally pro-independence and has warned her against any attempt at a breakaway.
Beijing said it had cut […]
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Benjamin Balthaser, - truthout
Stephan: Yet another Republican greed bomb. Republican social policy seems to have only two goals, the enrichment of the one per cent and creation of a docile indentured peasant class, Neo-feudalism. This scheme is so off-the-wall and so blatant that people should have broken into laughter and shamed former Republican Governor of Indiana and now Purdue President Mitch Daniels when he proposed it. Here's the story.
Credit: Jared Rodriguez/truthout
When tuition increases at public colleges gained steam in the early 1990s, I worried that no one seemed to take the astronomical price hikes seriously. Now there is a new crisis upon us: The very politicians who jacked up rates at our public colleges have bold, dangerous plans to “save” us.
Former Republican Governor of Indiana and now Purdue President Mitch Daniels recently received national praise with his “Back a Boiler” initiative, ostensibly meant to address the skyrocketing student debt load. On the face of it, the plan seems far more humane than the policies of the private credit collectors who service the nation’s $1.2 trillion student debt burden. However on closer examination, unlike credit card debt, this student debt cannot be erased through bankruptcy protections.
This, unfortunately, is the portrait of the new university: low-wage faculty teaching students who have mortgaged their futures to loan sharks.
In exchange for an education loan of say, $15,000, the lender would require a percentage of a student’s future earnings […]
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Arturo Garcia, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Republican Governor Rick Snyder, he of Flint, gives us yet another demonstration of the what poor governance looks like. This report also settles with a final replication the question of drug testing social support individuals. It is an utter and costly waste of time. The data is absolutely 100 per cent. There is no counter-example.
I must say Snyder is an astonishingly inept man. That he became governor is something the people of Michigan need to explain to themselves.
Republican Governor of Michigan Rick Snyder Credit: CNN
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who faced criticism earlier this year for his handling of the water crisis in Flint, could face more pushback after the apparent failure of his program requiring drug tests for welfare users.
The Guardian reported that none of the 303 people tested under the auspices of the Family Independence Program have tested positive for drugs as of the end of May.
The pilot program ends on Sept. 30 and received $300,000 in state funding, although a spokesperson for the state health department said only $300 had been spent thus far.
“The governor will wait until the pilot program has concluded and the report is delivered, as required by the legislation, to reach any conclusions,” said Anna Heaton, a spokesperson for Snyder’s office.
The program allows health department officials to require applicants to go through a drug test based on the results of the 50-question screening process. Refusal to do so disqualifies them from receiving financial assistance for six months. However, none of the […]
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