Renewed debate over President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) doctoral thesis from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) began at a public hearing on academic ethics at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Education and Culture Committee in Taipei yesterday.
The hearing was chaired by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖).
At the hearing, political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) said that he, Hwan C. Lin (林環牆), a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Belk College of Business, and National Taiwan University professor emeritus Ho De-fen (賀德芬) were “honored to become the first people in the history of Chinese Taipei to be sued by a sitting president.”
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
National Chengchi University Institute of International Relations researcher Yen Chen-shen (嚴震生) said that he found 444 spelling mistakes in Tsai’s thesis.
He placed a sticky note beside each mistake he found, he said, adding that if the thesis had been written by a student of his, he would not have accepted it.
He hopes that those who defend Tsai read the thesis, Yen said.
These proceedings are not a “privately established punishment hall,” Chen said, responding to criticism from the Democratic Progressive Party.
The hearing is live-streamed and people from various fields were invited, he said.
This is not the first time a situation involving an individual case has been discussed at a public hearing, he said, citing a hearing last year on the necessity of the Shenao Power Plant chaired by former DPP legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬).
Chen and others “have for several months, based on their electoral interests, avoided correct procedure of verifying with [the LSE] and proper authorities as they continued to concoct false information to mislead people and smear their opponents,” Tsai’s campaign office said in a statement.
It “highly regrets and strongly condemns” the alleged behavior, the office said.
Chiu Rong-jeo (邱榮舉), a former associate dean in National Taiwan University’s College of Social Sciences, said he has “mixed feelings” about the thesis issue, calling it one of “two major strange events” that has taken place in Taiwan this year.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai