A number of Taiwan's grand justices are billionaires, while several others have seen their family assets increase substantially over the past year, according to disclosure reports filed with the Control Yuan, the nation's top watchdog body.
The Control Yuan report shows that all grand justices have filed their assets disclosure reports for last year, with most doing well.
The report shows that Judicial Yuan President Weng Yueh-sheng (
He was one of the senior government officials who came under fire last year over alleged misuse of special allowance funds set aside for discretionary use. The asset disclosure report shows that Weng continued to deposit his special allowance fund into his bank account last year.
Over last year, Weng's state bond holdings decreased by more than NT$10 million, while his real estate holdings remained unchanged.
According to the report, Grand Justice Tseng You-tien (
Grand Justice Hsu Pi-hu (徐璧湖) also reported an enormous increase in family assets last year. In the 2005 report, Hsu had just NT$738,544 in bank deposits plus NT$102,181 in securities holdings. Last year, his bank deposit swelled to NT$5.67 million and his securities holdings also zoomed to NT$5.36 million.
Grand Justice Lai Ying-jaw (
Meanwhile, Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) is also a wealthy man, possessing a house and two plots of land in the US in addition to nearly NT$40 million in bank deposits and securities holdings.
Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra