Protesters against the forced demolition of four houses in Dapu Borough (大埔) in Miaoli County’s Jhunan Township (竹南) yesterday filed a lawsuit against Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) accusing him of corruption and other charges.
Thomas Chan (詹順貴), a Taiwan Rural Front member and an attorney who represents the four families, filed the suit with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division (SID) yesterday afternoon, accusing Liu of blackmail, illegal profiteering and owning property with uncertain history.
Chan alleged that Liu demanded NT$1 billion (US$33.3 million) in compensation from the state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) after it proposed renewing a power station and certain high-tension towers in Tongsiao Township (通霄) in the county, and because Taipower did not agree, Liu asked his officials to prevent the construction.
Photo: CNA
Showing the minutes of a county government meeting as evidence, Chan said Liu had used his office to blackmail Taipower.
The attorney said Liu’s government demolished houses around the proposed Taiwan High Speed Rail’s Miaoli Station, but houses belonging to his family remained, while his family used the opportunity to procure land around their houses, illegally profiting by NT$200 million.
He accused Liu of corruption by illegally profiteering for himself and his relatives.
The attorney said that in 2006, Liu said he was NT$50 million in debt, but in 2007, he said those debts had been paid, but he never made clear where the money came from.
He said the protesters did not trust the Miaoli District Prosecutors’ Office to handle the case, so they had asked the SID to look into it, he added.
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
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
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