A former Presidential Office official has been sentenced to two years in prison by the Taiwan High Court for leaking state secrets to China.
Wang Ren-bing (王仁炳) was found guilty on Friday of passing confidential information about President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) May 2008 inauguration to Chinese intelligence operatives.
Chen Pin-jen (陳品仁), a former aide of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟), was sentenced to eight months in prison for delivering the confidential information Wang gave him to China.
The two men were found guilty of violating the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), but can still appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, the high court said.
The ruling said Wang copied confidential documents from 2004 to 2008 when he worked under then-Presidential Office deputy secretaries-general Chen Che-nan (陳哲男), Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) and Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), when then-Democratic Progressive Party president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was in power.
Wang and Chen Pin-jen handed over seven confidential documents, including notes from a meeting between Chen Shui-bian and a US official, the ruling said.
Chen Pin-jen also collected information on Taiwan’s UN bids, lists of Taiwanese athletes at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and information on Taiwanese legislators visiting China, the ruling added.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
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