President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) never instructed the Ministry of Justice to preserve the Special Investigation Division (SID) in his capacity as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman, the party said yesterday, dismissing allegations made in the latest edition of the Chinese-language Next Magazine.
In a story published yesterday, the weekly said that Ma had sent a letter from the KMT chairman’s office to the ministry in October last year, in which he said that the SID has more advantages than disadvantages, and that the ministry should not abolish the division amid controversies over its wiretapping practices.
KMT spokesman Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中) said the party’s think tank — the National Policy Foundation — researched whether the unit should be scrapped last year and sent a report to the ministry in October for reference after Ma reviewed it.
“The KMT often sends the think tank’s research reports to different government bodies for reference. The SID report was one such case, it was not an instruction [from the KMT chairman],” Yang said.
The issue of the unit’s abolishment emerged in the wake of the so-called “September strife” between Ma and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) last year.
During the strife, it was discovered that the division had placed the telephone numbers of people in unrelated cases under a single wiretapping warrant amid an investigation that yielded allegations that Wang had improperly lobbied prosecutors not to appeal a non-guilty verdict handed down to Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).
The president has denied playing a role in the investigation into Wang’s alleged improper lobbying and has dismissed allegations that he instructed Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) to look into the case and remove Wang from his post.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
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