GOVERNMENT
NSB general impeached
All 13 Control Yuan members voted to impeach National Security Bureau (NSB) Major General Hsieh Ching-hua (謝靜華) for allegedly assaulting a woman in February. The case is to be handed to the Disciplinary Court for trial, the Control Yuan said yesterday. Hsieh was found to have forcibly kissed a woman on a sidewalk, it said. The scene was caught on camera and revealed by the press. The watchdog said that Hsieh had consumed alcohol before the incident, adding that he had lied during the NSB investigation, which led to the agency providing false information to the public. Hsieh had violated the victim and damaged the reputation of NSB special agents, the Control Yuan said. NSB personnel faced higher scrutiny and are held to higher standards than other public servants due to the nature of the agency’s national intelligence work, it added. The NSB in a statement said that it respects the conclusions reached by the Control Yuan and would cooperate with the Disciplinary Court trial. The bureau also pledged to boost the training of its personnel and said that any misconduct would be handled appropriately.
LEGISLATIVE YUAN
Session extended to Jan. 21
The legislative session would be extended to Jan. 21 to allow for the passing of the delayed budget bill and other contested legislation, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) said on Wednesday. The Legislative Yuan meets twice a year, from February to May and from September to December, with the option to extend sessions if necessary. Since the second session started on Sept. 20, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party lawmakers, who together hold a majority of seats, have repeatedly blocked the Cabinet’s NT$3.33 trillion (US$102.32 billion) budget proposal. They say that the budget failed to include funding for changes made by the legislature earlier this year, and demanded that the Cabinet revise and resubmit the plan. The Democratic Progressive Party on Nov. 7 ceded to their demands following a meeting between Cabinet officials and legislative leaders.
CRIME
Case judgement sought
Prosecutors have requested a summary judgement against a Kaohsiung woman who earlier this year allegedly called the 110 emergency number multiple times in the middle of the night to insult police officers. A court filing by the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office said that the 57-year-old woman, surnamed Lin (林), made nine calls to police using the 110 emergency hotline between 2am and 4am on Aug. 6. In her first call, Lin said she wanted to file a police report. When the officer on duty inquired about details, she asked him if he had “forgotten to bring his brain to work,” the filing said. The officer then played Lin a recording informing her that calling 110 without justification and ignoring subsequent warnings could be punishable as a crime against public order, at which point she hung up, the filing said. Soon after, Lin called the hotline again, swearing at the officers on duty and referring to them as “animals” and “garbage,” it said. Officers from the Kaohsiung Police Department’s Sinsing Precinct arrested her on suspicion of obstructing an officer. Prosecutors said Lin’s actions had contravened Article 140 of the Criminal Code and requested that the Kaohsiung District Court issue a summary judgement against her, as the facts of the case were not in dispute. Obstructing a public official is punishable by a prison sentence of up to one year or a maximum fine of NT$100,000.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
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
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. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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