Prosecutors yesterday dismissed charges against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) in a defamation case stemming from the alleged speculative acquisition and sales of military dependents’ housing by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice presidential candidate Jennifer Wang (王如玄).
Wang became embroiled in allegations over her real-estate dealings during the heated election campaign in November last year. Her pairing with KMT presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) lost the Jan. 16 election.
Wang filed a defamation suit against Tuan on Dec. 2, after Tuan accused Wang and her husband, former Judicial Yuan Department of Government Ethics director Huang Tung-hsun (黃東焄), of using their connections to acquire and to sell military housing units, which have restrictions on transactions.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday said that Tuan had requested the details of Wang’s real-estate transactions from the Control Yuan and the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office, and that the documents had formed the basis of his allegations.
Prosecutors ruled that Tuan had not defamed Wang, because he had checked and verified the information he obtained, while the details indicated that Wang had been involved in deals over 14 military housing units.
Prosecutors said that according to their investigation, Wang had purchased 12 military housing units from 1995 to 2009, and was involved in two other units without completing a deal.
The prosecutors said that there was no illegality involved in any of Wang’s real-estate transactions.
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
Taiwan has activated backup communications for its northernmost territory, the remote and strategically located island of Dongyin (東引), after poor weather conditions apparently shifted the wreckage of a ship onto an undersea cable causing it to break. The vulnerability of undersea communication cables linking Taiwan with its outlying islands has been a persistent cause of concern for Taipei, whose government has on several occasions blamed Chinese ships for intentionally causing damage. Dongyin, home to about 1,500 people, sits in a strategic position at the top of the Taiwan Strait and the island has a heavy military presence. It does not have an
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