Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Chien Shu-pei (簡舒培) yesterday criticized former Taipei Universiade Organizing Committee deputy chief executive officer (CEO) Chiu Da-chan (邱大展) for allegedly spreading a propaganda video made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) defending itself against calls to seize its ill-gotten assets.
Chien accused Chiu, who resigned from his posts as Taipei Department of Finance commissioner and the committee’s deputy CEO in April, of remaining in an instant messaging group used by committee officials and spreading the KMT-made video there, with Chien showing a screengrab of the group’s conversation as proof.
An online search found that the video ridiculed the DPP over the legislative process adopted for legislation aimed at seizing the KMT’s ill-gotten assets and accused the DPP of having launched a political witch-hunt against the KMT.
Chien said Chiu’s action shows that Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) had been careless about candidates’ backgrounds when recruiting officials.
She urged Ko to thoroughly investigate how many questionable members are in chat groups associated with the Universiade, as such people could jeopardize preparations for the sporting event.
Chiu could not be reached for comment.
Universiade spokesman Yang Ching-tan (楊景棠) said that Chiu is still a consultant for the Universiade, and that he likely sent the video inadvertently.
He said the committee would set rules governing members’ behavior in the groups.
At the time of his resignation, Chiu, who was embroiled in the Taipei Twin Towers scandal, said he resigned because the judiciary created a “hostile” environment for public servants.
He was appointed as KMT Administration and Management Committee director less than one month later.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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