Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wong Chung-chun (翁重鈞) yesterday sued a magazine for alleging that he fled the nation because he owed NT$500 million (US$15.5 million) to a gambling boss.
Wong filed a defamation lawsuit against the Chinese-language Next Magazine and is seeking NT$200 million in compensation.
Wong issued a statement through his office yesterday afternoon dismissing a story by the magazine, which alleged that he borrowed NT$500 million from a gambling boss named Chen Ying-chu (陳盈助) for his campaign for the Chiayi County commissioner election last month.
Wong lost the bid to Democratic Progressive Party candidate Chang Hwa-kuan (張花冠).
The story alleged that Wong left for the US because he had been unable to pay off the debt after losing the election, further alleging that Wong used his family’s rice factory as collateral for the loan and closed his office in Chiayi after he could not pay it off.
Wong said he went to the US as a “visiting scholar” at the invitation of the University of Iowa, while his offices in Chiayi and the legislature remain open.
“This untrue story by Next Magazine has caused tremendous damage to the reputation of me and my family,” Wong said, adding that he hoped the court could do him justice.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) also dismissed the magazine’s allegation that Wang helped the legislator borrow money from the gambling boss.
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