A rally last year run to oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage may have violated government regulations, the Taiwan International Association for Gay Rights said yesterday.
The association’s spokesman Chen Chih-ming (陳志明) told a press conference in Taipei that the coalition was not registered at the Ministry of the Interior, and that funding raised by the group had gone into church coffers was also suspicious.
Chen said the Charity Donations Act (公益勸募條例) states that donations made to religious groups cannot be used for nonreligious activities, adding that the Nov. 30 rally held by the Coalition for the Happiness of Our Next Generation had been designated a “civilian movement.”
“From the accounts I received of the donations, the Taiwan Lutheran Church raised NT$20 million [US$662,799] from the event, but it was not clear where the money went,” Chen said, adding that he suspected the coalition was manipulating the anti-gay marriage subject to raise funds for the church.
The government should launch an investigation into the matter, Chen said.
Also present at the press conference was Ministry of Health and Welfare official Chiang Kuo-jen (江國仁). Chiang said he would look into the funds raised by the event organizers.
The ministry’s religion division chief Huang Shu-kuan (黃淑冠) said it was difficult to say how the event should have been classified, adding that the division would look into the matter.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS