A legislative committee yesterday asked prosecutors to speed up probes into the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) four presidential hopefuls' alleged misuse of their allowance funds.
The Organic Laws and Statutes Committee said investigators and prosecutors should increase their inquiry efforts and wrap up the cases in a speedy manner.
Opposition legislators questioned how the DPP presidential aspirants -- Vice President Annette Lu (
Double standards
The lawmakers also criticized prosecutors for adopting double standards in the indictments of former Chinese National Party (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
In reply, Public Prosecutor- General Chen Tsung-ming (陳聰明) said he would summon head prosecutors nationwide to discuss the issue, seeking to set clear -- and preferably uniform -- standards.
KMT Legislator Chang Jen-hsiang (
Vice Minister of Justice Lee Chin-yung (
Lee also said that indictments of different people would be different even if uniform standards were applied.
Dinner scandal
The committee also requested yesterday that the Ministry of Justice present within a week details on reports that Chen had dined with the first family's former doctor, Huang Fang-yen (
Lee admitted that Chen's conduct was inappropriate and that he should have exercised more prudence.
However, he urged the public to recognize Chen's sincerity in doing his job and respect the process by which he was elected as the nation's top prosecutor.
While opposition lawmakers have called for Chen's resignation, Lee said that the top prosecutor can only step down when his or her four-year term expires. He or she may be subject to reprimand or dismissal if found guilty of violating the Law on Discipline of Civil Servants (公務人員懲戒法).
Citing a statute regulating the conducts of prosecutors, KMT Legislator Kuo Su-chun (
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