Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and independent Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) yesterday continued bickering over whether Hsieh had mentioned "the empress" -- referring to first lady Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) -- during a phone conversation with Chiu.
"I swear. If Hsieh never said so, as he claimed, I will immediately resign. Also, if I'm lying, I will be struck and killed by a car once I step out of this door. However, if he is lying, I think the premier should step down," Chiu said.
Chiu was not hit by a car yesterday.
Chiu added he was willing to take a polygraph to prove that he had not been lying.
On Tuesday, Chiu said Hsieh had confirmed that he was following up with hints about the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) scandal, but had also reminded the lawmaker "not to touch the empress" because he would only come to a dead end if he did.
Chiu said the "empress" was Wu, hinting that she might be involved in the scandal.
Chiu said it was important whether Hsieh depicted Wu as an "empress." He said that Hsieh used to call Wu the "empress" when he was the Kaohsiung mayor, so it was a lie for Hsieh to deny that he never used such a term to depict Wu.
In response to Chiu's remarks, Hsieh yesterday said that he is not the one who had been lying, but that Chiu was.
"First of all, the first lady has nothing to do with [the KRTC scandal]," Hsieh said. "Also, a polygraph can only be conducted by law enforcement officers once they have launched an investigation. It is not something that Chiu can do just because he wants to."
Chiu said he will file a slander suit against the premier to "respond" to the premier's comments.
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