Commentators yesterday questioned the impartiality of the prosecutor investigating the alleged misuse of Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen (侯寬仁) should hand over the investigation to another prosecutor, the experts said.
"Ma was the witness at Hou's wedding ceremony, which indicates their good relations," former senior adviser to the president Peng Ming-min (
Peng said that according to the Criminal Procedure Code (
Lin Ching-tsung (
Y.C. Kao (高湧誠), executive director of the Judicial Reform Foundation, said that the Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers who filed the corruption suit against Ma could apply for a transfer of the investigation if they were concerned about bias. The Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office would then have to make a public ruling on the application.
He said if that were to happen, the prosecutors' office would have to explain to the public why the investigation should or should not be transferred.
The head of the Taiwan High Court Prosecutors' Office, Hsieh Wen-ding (
The office's spokesman, Chang Wen-cheng (
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
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