Non-government organizations opposed to gambling in Penghu yesterday demanded a debate with legislators promoting a bill to legalize gambling and threatened street protests if the proposal is passed.
"We will hold a debate with legislators promoting the bill and we will take to the streets, if these legislators decline to debate but manipulate the bill's passage," said Shih Chao-hui (釋昭慧) at an anti-gambling press conference held yesterday.
Shih said the date for a debate has not yet been decided upon.
A draft amendment to the Offshore Islands Development Act
The draft amendment's smooth process has been credited to DPP Legislator Chang Ching-fang's
The Cabinet turned down a proposal early last month to legalize gambling on outlying islands.
Lu Chunyi (盧俊義), a minister at the Presbyterian East Gate Church, yesterday said his church would drop its support for the administration if the amendment passes the legislature. The Presbyterian church has traditionally had strong ties with the DPP.
"In my religion, gambling means taking a path to evil. Whenever the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration leads the society to evil, it will be a date for the Presbyterian Church to part from the DPP," Lu said.
The Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien's
"The remarks of government officials represent the stance of the government. It's inappropriate for Yu to publicly express his personal support for the bill, especially when the Cabinet had turned down the bill," said Yeh Chih-kuei (葉志魁), a professor of tourism studies at National Dong Hwa University.
Meanwhile, Chang said he would be willing to attend a debate on gambling. "This is a controversial issue and it is extremely difficult to reach any consensus. I believe that only by legalizing gambling would Taiwanese' interests in gambling decrease," he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching