Taichung prosecutors yesterday said that as no law appeared to have been broken, they had not launched an investigation into the posting of a spoof version of a campaign video that portrayed twin sisters — volunteers for Taichung Mayor Jason Hu’s (胡志強) re-election bid — as girls working in a well-known hostess bar in Taichung.
The Taichung District Prosecutors Office said in a press statement that so far no lawsuit had been filed over the matter. Furthermore, as prosecutors were still not clear whether the content of the video spoof, which was spread on the Internet, violated any law, they had not launched a formal investigation.
The twins — Chen Pei-yu (陳珮瑜) and Chen Pei-han (陳珮涵) — said the short video, which was produced with friends, was intended to encourage young people to vote for Hu.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
In the video, which is available on Hu’s campaign Web site, the twins, accompanied by Hu and other girls, are seen dancing and singing.
A spoof version of the clip available on the popular YouTube Web site portrayed the young women as working as hostesses at a nightclub in Taichung.
In the altered version, footage of the twins is played alongside video of the club and hostesses, with voiceovers claiming the women offer sex services to customers.
Although Hu’s camp had said it would consider filing a lawsuit against the makers of the altered video, it has yet to take any action.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
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