Deputy Legislative Speaker Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) yesterday said he would sue for defamation after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) by-election candidate Yen Kuan-heng’s (顏寬恒) campaign spokesman said that Tsai’s business interests were partly behind corruption allegations against Yen.
Yen is the KMT’s candidate in Taichung’s second electoral district in a by-election scheduled for Jan. 9, facing Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), following the recall of Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟) of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party last month.
In a controversy over the Taichung Harbor No. 105 wharf, local DPP city councilors and New Power Party lawmakers have demanded a judicial probe into Yen’s alleged conflict of interest, abuse of power, intimidation of government officials and illegal obtainment security contracts during his term as a KMT legislator from 2013 to 2016.
They said that Yen pressured the Taichung Port Authority to issue private sector contracts for storage of imported coal from incoming freighters that supply the Taichung Power Plant operated under the state-owned Taiwan Power Co (Taipower).
Taichung Port and transport ministry officials revised the plan to outsource the No. 105 wharf through a public tender under pressure from Yen, they said.
The tender was won by Chengfeng Warehouse and Harbor Service last year.
In response, Yen said that the tender was secured legally.
Yen’s campaign spokesman Chang Yu-hsuan (張禹宣) said that Tsai had served in an executive role for a rival company, Chien Shing Harbour Service Co, which lost out on the tender bid.
Chang said that Tsai owned 39,000 shares of Chien Shing stock, currently worth more than NT$1.5 billion (US$53.89 million).
Tsai, a DPP member, said on Thursday that the accusation was false and would file a defamation suit against Yen, pledging to donate any funds awarded to charity.
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
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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