The bickering over the government's name-change campaign boiled over in the legislature yesterday, as an official invited to a legislative committee meeting who identified himself as working at the Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall was dismissed for having questionable credentials.
People First Party (PFP) Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟), who chaired yesterday's Organic Laws and Statutes Committee meeting, asked Tseng Sang-jin (曾燦金), deputy director of the former Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂), to leave the meeting because Tseng had written "deputy director of the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall" as his position on the meeting's sign-up sheet.
"We did not invite anyone from the Democracy Memorial Hall and we do not recognize such an institution. Get out!" Lu said, pounding on the desk. "Do you want me to call security to throw you out?"
PHOTO: CNA
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Sing-Nan (
Wang then returned to the meeting and engaged in a slanging match with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Sun Ta-Chien (
Wang then called Sun a wang ba dan (
Sun replied by saying that a bomber did not deserve to serve in the legislature.
Wang sent a parcel bomb to the former vice president and Taiwan provincial governor, Hsieh Tung-min (
The two almost got into a fight but were pulled apart by KMT caucus whip Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權).
Vice Minister of Education Chou Tsan-der (
While the legislature is in the process of reviewing the abolition of the law governing CKS Memorial Hall, Chou said the ministry was authorized by law to draw up a new organizational code for the Democracy Memorial Hall. The committee has threatened to block the cancelation of the law.
Regarding the hall's budget, Chou said the Cabinet secretary-general last Tuesday agreed to let the Democracy Memorial Hall use the budget that was earmarked for CKS Memorial Hall.
Chou said that the hall's new signs were put up in accordance with the law and they were not advertisements in nature. The canvas sheet covering the name plate of CKS Memorial Hall was not an advertisement either, he said, nor did it violate the Cultural Heritage Protection Law (
While the Taipei City Government took down the canvas sheets and issued fines to the ministry for "harming the public interest," Chou said they would file a grievance complaint and seek nullification of the city's decision.
Chou yesterday, however, conceded that the CKS Memorial Hall and Democracy Memorial Hall co-exist from a legal point of view, but emphasized the organization of CKS Memorial Hall itself had ceased to exist.
Yeh Ching-Yuan (葉慶元), chairman of the city's Law and Regulation Commission, dismissed Chou's arguments as "false" and questioned whether the ministry's move was intended to help the DPP win votes in the upcoming elections.
KMT Legislator Hung Shiu-chu (
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