People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), who is running in today's Taipei mayoral election as an independent, joined Democratic Progressive Party Taipei mayoral candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday to question the role of the father of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) in the Lafayette kickback scandal.
"Did [Hau's father] Hau Pei-tsun (
If Ma endorsed Hau Lung-bin, Soong said, Ma would have to shoulder the political and moral responsibility for the scandal.
PHOTO: CNA
Hsieh, at a separate press conference, also asked Ma to guarantee that Hau Lung-bin and his family members are not involved in the Lafayette scandal.
"This case concerns bribe money of NT$17 billion (US$515 million), five human lives and several countries. But, it is impossible to finish the investigation before election day," Hsieh said.
If any of the Hau family is convicted for offences related to the case, Ma should step down and withdraw from politics for good, Hsieh said.
In response, Ma yesterday said he would not comment on the "election rhetoric."
"I don't understand the case, how can I endorse Hau's family?" he said yesterday while visiting the Datung District with Hau Lung-bin.
Hau Lung-bin, on the other hand, insisted on his and his father's innocence.
"My father and I are innocent. Our innocence doesn't need Chairman Ma's endorsement," he said.
He urged the Hsieh camp to turn the case over to the prosecutors if it had any further questions.
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