Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday acknowledged that his sister, Ma Yi-nan (馬以南), had met Chang An-le (張安樂), the former leader of the Bamboo Union gang, but denied receiving political donations from the gangster.
"I knew my sister solicited support at a campaign event for me, but I wasn't aware she had met Chang. I will ask her to be more careful next time," Ma said yesterday at his campaign headquarters.
A story in the latest issue of Next Magazine said that Ma Yi-nan met Chang during a campaign party in June held by Taiwanese businesspeople in Shenzhen, China. It reported that Chang had agreed to make donations for Ma Ying-jeou's campaign.
Chang, nicknamed the White Wolf, is wanted by Taiwanese authorities and is in hiding in China.
Ma spokesman Luo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said yesterday that Ma Yi-nan had been invited to attend the event, where, with Chang present, she sought to win support for Ma. Luo said, however, that the event in question was held in June rather than in April.
Luo said that at the time, Ma Ying-jeou had yet to be formally nominated by the KMT and that therefore no political donations were made.
Luo said the Ma camp had handled all political donations in accordance with the law.
The Ma camp also dismissed allegations by Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) camp that another sister of Ma Ying-jeou, Theresa Chao (馬冰如), was a principal at a school in Beijing and that the candidate's promise to recognize educational background from China would therefore benefit that school.
Luo said the International School of Beijing invited Chao to teach at the school in 1998 and that she has since become the principal of the school's Chinese department.
Also see: MOEA announces it will postpone joint venture with UAE
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS