Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) and other DPP legislators yesterday accused President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of filing a false report on political donations of NT$670 million (US$19.25 million) and requested that prosecutors investigate a recent claim made by former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
After visiting Chen at the Taipei Detention Center in Tucheng (土城), Taipei County, yesterday, Southern Taiwan Society director Cheng Yu (鄭煜) said Chen had told him that two “important individuals” had each made donations of NT$1 billion to Ma in the hope that they would be made premier.
Ker said he had heard Chen talk about the issue before, adding that no one believed Ma had only spent NT$670 million on his presidential campaign.
Prosecutors should look into Ma’s campaign expenditure report, Ker said, adding it was unfair that only Chen would be investigated on such matters.
DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) agreed with Ker that an investigation should be launched, as did DPP Legislator William Lai (賴清德), who said that although he had not heard Chen talk about the matter, he believed the former president had good reasons for making such allegations.
Lai also questioned how some businesses had so readily admitted to making donations to DPP presidential and vice presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) election campaign while not making any donations to Ma.
How is this possible, given that many companies are generally perceived as pan-blue, he asked.
Looking at the manner in which the Special Investigation Panel had investigated Chen, Lai said prosecutors should also investigate the pan-blue camp.
He said he hoped prosecutors would launch an investigation based on the information provided by Chen and make the results public.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching