A top law enforcement official said yesterday that makers of "defamatory" VCDs to attack candidates in the Dec. 3 local government elections would be prosecuted, while Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) was alerted he was a VCD-maker's next target.
State Public Prosecutor General Wu Ying-chao (吳英昭) told the legislature that "producing such VCDs during the campaign would violate the Election and Recall Law (
Wu's statement came after Taoyuan police arrested Lin Yi-fang (林一方), Peng Jin-wen (彭金萬) and three of their aides on Friday, on suspicion of producing a VCD to defame Taoyuan County commissioner Chu Li-lun (朱立倫), a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) who is standing for re-election next month.
But Lin defended his work, telling local newspapers that he is not making VCDs to defame candidates in the upcoming elections, but rather making a series of TV programs to expose officials who are involved in scandals. He added that Chu, Hu and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Lin is a producer of the "Special Report" series of VCDs, which were first released in the runup to last year's presidential elections to blacken the name of People first Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) and other pan-blue lawmakers. Wu said that prosecutors would make an effort to prevent the production and distribution of such VCDs.
After learning there were some people making such "defamatory" VCDs, Taoyuan police on Friday night raided a company studio at Zhongxiao E Rd in Taipei, seizing the VCD. The five suspects were released after police took statements.
Police said that because the VCD has not been released, the suspects had not violated the Law of Offenses Against Personal Reputation and Credits (妨害名譽罪) or the Election and Recall Law, so they would let Taoyuan prosecutors decide whether to charge them.
Taoyuan police said that in the 45-minute VCD, four actors are seen chatting about Chu and his family. They insinuate that Chu had an affair with his former secretary, and that Chu's father-in-law Kao Yu-jen (
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