Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday urged President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to hold an open dialogue with people petitioning for an anti-nuclear referendum to explain the government’s policy on nuclear energy.
“If more than 100,000 people signed the petition, Ma would be obligated to publicly explain his policy,” Lu, who had initiated an anti-nuclear referendum in New Taipei City (新北市), told a press conference.
Lu said her office has collected 32,769 signatures, considerably more than the minimum of 16,000 required to submit a referendum proposal, and would keep working on the second phase, which requires 160,000 signatures in six months for a referendum to be held.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
The former vice president also defended a controversial initiative to combine the referendum with the local elections next year, saying that as the referendum is expected to be held in August next year, the timing would be only three to four months away from the local elections and it makes sense to combine the two to save money.
Lu said she did not rule out organizing a rally on May 20 on Ketagalan Boulevard and demanding an open dialogue with Ma on the nuclear issue.
DPP Legislator Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said that if the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) ignored the opinion of residents of Taipei, New Taipei City and Keelung — 63 percent of whom support stopping the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao (貢寮), according to a recent survey — KMT lawmakers representing these constituencies should be recalled.
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Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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