Two female legislators became embroiled in a confrontation during a meeting of the Education and Culture Committee yesterday during a preliminary review of the National Science Council’s budget request.
Three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers held up signs that read “Full control of the government means full authoritarianism” when the meeting began in a bid to boycott the committee’s review of the budget proposal.
The three legislators want to submit a proposal to cut the council’s budget but need another legislator to endorse their request in order to put it on the agenda.
The DPP only has three seats in the committee, however, so their initiative has been put aside.
The council is requesting NT$35.9 billion (US$1.08 billion) for the next fiscal year.
During the review, DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) slapped Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) on the face after Hung accidentally injured Kuan’s assistant in the eye as Hung was trying to push a poster away.
Kuan and Hung got into a heated exchange, with Hung accusing Kuan of staging a “show” and Kuan scolding Hung for hurting her assistant.
In the end, the committee cut NT$152.8 million from the budget request before passing it.
After the meeting, the KMT caucus and Hung condemned Kuan for “resorting to violence.”
“This was not a slap on my face. It was a slap on Taiwan’s democracy and law,” Hung said.
KMT caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世) later called upon DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to issue an apology for the conflict.
When asked for comment, Kuan said she slapped Hung because she “couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I’m willing to take full responsibility [for the incident],” Kuan said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the