Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) has accused President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of collusion over the wiretapping case after Ma summoned a number of top judicial and police officials to his weekly national security meeting yesterday.
At a meeting of the legislature’s Judicial and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, Ker said that Ma was trying to cover up the political scandal over wiretapping of the legislature, after the president called in Bureau of Investigation Director Wang Fu-lin (王福林), National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai De-sheng (蔡得勝), and National Police Agency (NPA) Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) for the meeting.
“It is clear that Ma is directing the collusion effort and trying to cover up the facts, so when the results of the judicial probe into the wiretapping case are released, they will whitewash the whole thing,” Ker said.
“Ma has Wang Fu-lin in the Presidential Office to collude together on their statements over the wiretapping case,” Ker said. “In fact, Wang, whose bureau carried out the wiretapping, is rarely asked to attend the regular national security meeting.”
Responding to Ker’s accusation, Presidential Office spokesperson Lee Chia-fei (李佳霏) said that it was a regular weekly meeting on national security issues.
“The meeting’s agenda differ each week, according to the issues involved. We would like to ask Ker not to speculate or make exaggerated interpretations,” Lee said.
Lee said yesterday’s meeting was to review security measures on cross-strait exchange programs, so the National Security Council had invited law-enforcement agencies, the Mainland Affairs Council, the Bureau of Investigation, the National Immigration Agency, the Coast Guard Administration and other departments.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to