Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday dismissed as misinformation media reports that he had been invited by a US expert to visit think tanks in Washington during a trip to the US in March.
Ko said that his administrative team never said it had received an invitation from Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia and director of the China Power Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“This is typical fake news,” Ko said. “I only said we will go to the US in March. That’s it, no more.”
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Ko’s remark followed a statement released a day earlier by Glaser, in which she denied having invited him.
Chinese-language online news outlet Up Media on Friday last week reported that Glaser, leading a group of CSIS members, visited Ko at Taipei City Hall last month and that during the meeting, the two agreed that Ko would visit the institute and hold a closed-door event during the March trip.
On Monday, the Chinese-language China Times said that it was Glaser who invited Ko.
In a statement e-mailed to the Central News Agency, Glaser said that the Up Media report and those following it contained “inaccurate information and in my view are trying to portray me as supporting Ko’s bid for the presidency.”
A proposal to visit Washington think tanks was made by a staff member in Ko’s office, Glaser said.
The staff member had approached a leading US expert at one of the major think tanks, which Glaser said was not CSIS, weeks before their visit to Taiwan.
The US expert, whose name was not divulged, “offered to hold a closed-door meeting with US scholars for Ko during his planned March trip to the United States,” Glaser said.
“Later, the expert and I discussed the proposed event and I agreed to cohost it,” Glaser said, adding that “the event will not be held at CSIS.”
It was obvious that “members of Ko’s staff decided to distort the facts so that it would appear that not only I, but also CSIS, where I work, are supporting his presidency,” she said.
“I strongly object to being used in this way... I am not picking sides in the upcoming elections,” she added.
Taipei City Government spokesman Liu Yi-ting (劉奕霆) on Sunday last week confirmed that Ko would visit the US in March, but the exact date and itinerary have not yet been settled.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
TRAFFIC SAFETY RULES: A positive result in a drug test would result in a two-year license suspension for the driver and vehicle, and a fine of up to NT$180,000 The Ministry of Transportation and Communications is to authorize police to conduct roadside saliva tests by the end of the year to deter people from driving while under the influence of narcotics, it said yesterday. The ministry last month unveiled a draft of amended regulations governing traffic safety rules and penalties, which included provisions empowering police to conduct mandatory saliva tests on drivers. While currently rules authorize police to use oral fluid testing kits for signs of drug use, they do not establish penalties for noncompliance or operating procedures for officers to follow, the ministry said. The proposed changes to the regulations require
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
RSS