During his first appearance yesterday in the Legislative Yuan as the Government Information Office (GIO) director-general, former Cabinet spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) faced a tough crowd of pan-blue legislators who questioned Lin's qualifications.
During questioning, Peoples First Party Legislator Diane Lee (
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Pan-blue legislators asked whether, as former Cabinet spokesman, Lin would transfer his party's doctrine over to his post as GIO head.
The committee meeting was held to discuss unfreezing parts of the GIO budget relating to national media operations, media relations and official government initiative promotions. Because of last year's controversy surrounding the "embedded marketing policy" supported by former GIO director-general Arthur Iap (葉國興), the Legislative Yuan's Education and Culture committee decided to freeze the GIO budget in those areas.
"Embedded marketing" refers to a policy that integrates government agencies' resources to buy air time and advertisement space to promote government initiatives.
Pan-blue legislators also took the hearing as an opportunity to question the GIO's function, saying that the embedded marketing policy and the amount spent on referendum advertising prior to the election clearly marked the GIO as a vehicle for ruling party propaganda.
Although pan-blue supporters unanimously voted to maintain the budget freeze on all three aspects of the GIO budget, enough pro-green legislators were present to push through the unlocking of the three parts.
When asked about his thoughts on his first report, the ever-smiling Lin said, "It went much more smoothly than I expected."
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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