Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday raised the possibility that staff at Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (
Last Wednesday Ma said the controversy surrounding his special mayoral allowance was the result of an "administrative defect" by Taipei City Government staffer Yu Wen (余文), who substituted receipts for smaller amounts with personal receipts for larger amounts.
DPP Legislator Hsu Kuo-yung (
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (
Ma should ask Prosecutor Hou Kuan-jen (
In response, the city government's Secretariat Director Lee Sush-der(
Lee, meanwhile, admitted that the person who gave Kuan the mayor's cash remittance note of NT$15 million (US$455,580) to charity groups last Friday was a member of the Tsai Jui-yueh Dance Foundation.
The individual's behavior was a violation of personal privacy and an insult, said Lee.
But it was up to the mayor whether to sue the individual, Lee added.
Lee added that the city government would not make public the details of Ma's donation, referring to Ma's announcement on Friday night that he would donate the portion of his special allowance fund received over the past eight years to charity.
Kuan, meanwhile, yesterday also accused the city government of forcing Felix Chen (陳秋盛), a former resident conductor and director of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, to retire without further investigation into alleged forgery charges that were brought against him three years ago.
Chen, who was present at yesterday's press conference, said the city government also forced him to copy a retirement report drafted by the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, adding that Ma did not deal with his petition.
In response, Lee said Chen's case was referred to judicial investigation after the city government conducted an internal investigation.
Ma also asked the government to handle the case in accordance with government regulations after Chen pleaded with him, Lee said, adding "it is a personal problem. It has nothing to do with the mayor."
Director of the Cultural Affairs Department Commissioner Sebastian Liao (
Chen was asked to write a retirement report because the department wanted to prevent the public from thinking there was anything untoward about the case, since he had not reached retirement age, Liao added.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS