A social media post implying that Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) was an informant for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) authoritarian regime when he was a college student was sent from an IP address in the Philippines, Tainan police said yesterday.
Posted on the Professional Technology Temple online bulletin board on Nov. 15 last year, the post insinuated that Huang, of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), had worked as an informant for the KMT when he was a National Taiwan University student.
Huang called it senseless speculation.
Photo: Yang Chin-cheng, Taipei Times
“I am not A143,” he told reporters at the time, referring to a code number for an unidentified informant.
He also reported the case to city police, which subsequently sent a document to the Criminal Investigation Bureau’s international criminal affairs division to request help to investigate the matter, police said.
While Tainan police had determined the location of the sender, they were still looking for the person who had posted the article.
Huang yesterday again denied the claim on Facebook, saying that he had not worked as an informant or collaborated with special agents during the authoritarian era, which lasted from 1949 to 1987.
He added that he would take legal action against anyone with bad intentions who had made those false accusations.
“In a democratic Taiwan, it is ridiculous that people still use false special agent reports for political power struggles and allow the specter of the authoritarian regime to continue haunting the country,” Huang said in the post.
“My stance is clear: Make all folders and files during the authoritarian era public for review” to find those who should be held accountable during the era, Huang wrote on Facebook.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai