The Taipei District Court (台北地方法院) yesterday said that the former commander of the Combined Services Force General Headquarters Wen Ha-hsiung (溫哈熊) and Ting Shou-chung (
Chiang Hsiao-chang (
Wen was interviewed by the Academia Sinica (
During the interview, Wen also said that Chiang was pregnant before she married Yu. He also said that Yu Tai-wei has once bowed to Yu Yang-ho's second wife and asked her to divorce his son so Yu junior could marry Chiang legally.
Judge Wu Ding-ya's (
The aim of an "oral history" is to propose questions or issues for researchers to investigate to amend official history books. As such, this medium should be protected as a kind of freedom of speech.
The court did not find any evidence to prove that Wen was libeling.
"It was the Academia Sinica's decision to interview Wen," said Wu. "In other words, Wen was just doing his job as an interviewee and told the interviewer what he knew. He had the right to say whatever he believed to be true. Whether to believe it or not was a decision up to the interviewer. This kind of oral history should be protected and it's more important than [ordinary] freedom of speech [issues]."
Wu said that the court believed that Wen did not intend to damage Chiang's and Yu's reputations so the libel charge against him was dropped.
As for Ting, Wu explained that as a son-in-law of Wen, Ting could not avoid being chased by the press for quotes and sound bites for news coverage. What he did was interpret what he knew or what Wen told him. As a result, the court also believed that he did not have any intention to libel the plaintiffs, either.
Wang Ching-feng (
"The book was published with Wen's authorization and he said that he would be responsible for every word he said," said Wang. "How can he make up something to ruin people's reputations like this and not to be responsible for it?"
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
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
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.
‘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