Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday accepted an apology by the Chinese-language Apple Daily for causing controversy with the content of its News-In-Motion feature, but said the city government would continue monitoring its content.
The newspaper ran a statement yesterday apologizing over the controversial news content of News-In-Motion, saying it started rating its news content on Saturday.
Apple Daily also canceled plans to file a lawsuit against Hau and the city government for banning the newspaper at municipal schools.
Taipei City Government spokesperson Chao Hsin-ping (趙心屏) said the city government expected the Apple Daily to fulfill its promise, adding that it would ask the National Communications Commission to determine whether the newspaper’s rating system met regulations.
“The Taipei City Government respects the freedom of the press. We took the measures against the newspaper in order to protect children and teenagers,” she said.
The Hau administration gave Next Media Ltd, publisher of the Apple Daily, two fines totaling NT$1 million (US$31,000) for publishing sensational content in violation of media classification regulations in the Children and Juveniles Welfare Act (兒童及青少年福利法).
The city government also ordered all schools in the city to cancel their subscriptions to the newspaper because it contained a barcode enabling free downloads of News-in-Motion clips to cellphones.
The Apple Daily — owned by Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英) — launched News-In-Motion last week as part of a trial run before the Apple Group expands into TV.
The service is accessible only to readers who pay a fee.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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