The Taiwan High Court yesterday ruled against former National Security Council secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) in a libel suit he filed against award-winning screenwriter and author Neil Peng (馮光遠) in connection with comments the author made about the nature of King’s relationship with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
The High Court ruled that, in the context of Peng’s Facebook comments, the “special relationship” that Peng described between King and Ma was not centered on their sexual orientation, but their personal relationship, which Peng said had led to King’s appointment to several government positions.
Peng’s comments thereby did not constitute libel, the court said.
The Taipei District Court made a similar ruling in August last year.
Meanwhile, the High Court ruled that words like “idiot,” “bitch” and “asshole” in Peng’s Facebook posts, though mean-spirited, were not “empty slander,” but commentaries directed at specific incidents and therefore did not constitute public insults against King.
In a Facebook message posted in 2012, Peng insinuated that King’s “Brokeback” relationship with Ma had helped him secure government posts without having any background in the fields, referring to Ang Lee’s (李安) movie about a homosexual love story, Brokeback Mountain.
The ruling marked King’s eighth loss out of nine suits he has filed since 1997, with one suit against People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) withdrawn in 2011.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS