Justice minister Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) yesterday complained that some legislative judicial committee members were only interested discussing cases they are involved in and not other issues that the committee must deal with during regular meetings.
Chen made the remarks yesterday at the legislative judicial committee meeting after Chinese Nationalist Party Legislator Ho Chih-hui (何智輝) and People First Party Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) insisted on raising questions regarding their own cases. Ho has been indicted on charges of corruption, theft and breach of trust while Chiu has been indicted on charges of damaging public property. Ho was summoned after he was indicted on May 7 this year. He failed to respond to the court's summons, however, and was declared a fugitive after missing three hearings and avoiding three arrest attempts.
The indictment said that Ho took illegally obtained a loan from the Hsinchu Commercial Bank to help fund his wife's political campaign. The bank allegedly gave him a NT$300 million loan despite his poor credit history.
In addition, in 1997, Ho allegedly pressured his subordinates to approve a construction proposal submitted by Chiu-chun Development Co even though the company had failed to provide a complete environmental protection plan for the project. Prosecutors said Ho received a NT$320 million bribe from the company in exchange for his help in getting the proposal approved. Chiu is accused of leading a group of protesters to surround the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors' Office immediately after the presidential election results were released on March 20, and encouraging the group to force its way into the compound. The judicial committee was questioning the justice minister about his work.
Although the two have been charged with a crime, they are allowed sit on the legislative committee until a verdict is rendered.
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
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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