Suspected gangster and independent legislator Lo Fu-chu (
Lo received the support of KMT legislators.
In addition, Lo's son, KMT lawmaker Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才), was elected convener of the legislature's Finance Committee (財政委員會), along with KMT legislator Gary Wang (王令麟).
PHOTO: LU CHUN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
The younger Lo was once accused by lawmakers of coercing bankers into giving him loans, while Wang is currently charged with illegally pocketing NT$400 million in a shady land deal.
The legislature's committees are made up of 21 members, including three conveners. One member from the KMT and DPP act as convener, along with one independent.
The committees meet once a week and the position of convener alternates among the three. The convener's role is to take turns chairing the meeting and coordinating the agenda for the following week's meeting.
Lo Fu-chu is allegedly connected to Tiendaomeng (天道盟), an organized crime group, raising doubts as to the appropriateness of his membership on the Judicial Committee.
"I cannot bear to see the president of the Judicial Yuan Weng Yueh-sheng (
Tsai added that legislators who have been indicted or convicted on criminal charges should not run for convener of the Judicial Committee. He also said that former Minister of Justice Liao Cheng-hao (
Bowing before fellow committee members is a ritual practiced under local governmental protocol when making reports or presentations.
In response to Tsai's remarks, Lo yesterday angrily threatened to file libel suits against the lawmaker and blamed the media for discrediting him.
"I did not steal my post as legislator and the media are not being fair with me. How could you all treat me like a mafioso without evidence?" Lo said, lashing out at reporters at the Legislative Yuan yesterday.
Defending his father, Lo Ming-tsai blamed other legislators and the media for tarnishing his father's name. In addition, the younger Lo asked prominent local Buddhist leader the Venerable Sheng-yen (
Sheng-yen, in response, urged Lo Ming-tsai to ignore the criticism of others. The spiritual leader advised legislators, including both Los, to engage in introspection, saying: "As long as you think you are doing the right thing, you shouldn't care too much about what other people think of you."
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has