The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday told Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) to come clean on how he amassed a vast fortune in stocks and government bonds in just four years.
In a counter-attack to KMT accusations that first lady Wu Shu-Chen (吳淑珍) was guilty of insider trading, DPP lawmakers said Lien had lied about not playing the stock market for the past four years because a recent property-disclosure record required of presidential candidates showed that the KMT leader had accumulated some NT$260 million worth of stocks and government bonds since 2000.
According to the reports handed over to the Central Election Commission when registering for the presidential election, Lien's movable property, including stocks, bonds and bank savings, has increased by NT$260 million over the past four years, while President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) personal assets have decreased by NT$30 million.
The KMT campaign headquarters said that the increase in Lien's wealth resulted from buying government bonds with money made from selling stocks and from the KMT chairman's other incomes, including rent revenue, pensions and stock interest.
DPP campaign headquarters spokesman Wu Nai-jen (
"The KMT's remarks are contradictory," Wu said, adding that "Lien has to explain his stock transactions in detail as NT$260 million is no small amount of money."
KMT Administration and Management Committee Director-General Chang Che-shen (
In response to Chang, DPP legislative caucus whip Tsai Huang-liang (
Also see story:
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying