Premier Yu Shyi-kun reaffirmed the government's determination yesterday to get to the bottom of the scandal surrounding the 1991 purchase of six Lafayette-class frigates from France.
"As national reputation, government credibility and individual human rights are at stakes in the Lafayette procurement scandal, the government will never waver in its commitment to find the truth about the purchase and any irregularities," Yu said at a weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday.
Yu described former French foreign minister Roland Dumas' recent claims that some US$400 million in kickbacks attached to the Lafayette deal were funnelled into the coffers of Taiwan's ruling party in the 1990s as a valuable lead.
"Investigators assigned to probe the case have been ordered to follow up the lead and step up their investigation of possible suspects, regardless of whether they are political parties or individuals," Yu said.
Noting that five navy officers have been indicted for inflating the price of the frigates for the benefit of the vessels' French builder, Yu said the indictments prove the government's determination to obtain the whole truth in the case, regardless of who was involved.
Vice Minister of Justice Hsieh Wen-ding (謝文定) said Tuesday that prosecutors will contact the French and Swiss authorities with a view to verifying Dumas' allegations, but he added that he was not sure how long this will take in light of the absence of official ties with the two European nations.
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