英倫翻譯社/ Trsmaster

, U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay said Monday calling on the U.N. Security Council to launch a crimes against humanity case.

Pillay told the Security Council of reports of increased attacks by opposition groups on President Bashar al-Assad’s forces but also highlighted “alarming” events in the besieged protest city of Homs.

Her private briefing to the 15-nation council -- where Russia and China blocked a resolution condemning Assad in October -- heightened divisions over how to respond to the Syria">Syria

troubles.

France’s U.N. envoy said the council was “morally responsible” for the daily deaths by staying silent.

Russia, a key ally of Syria">Syria

, U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay said Monday calling on the U.N. Security Council to launch a crimes against humanity case.

Pillay told the Security Council of reports of increased attacks by opposition groups on President Bashar al-Assad’s forces but also highlighted “alarming” events in the besieged protest city of Homs.

Her private briefing to the 15-nation council -- where Russia and China blocked a resolution condemning Assad in October -- heightened divisions over how to respond to the Syria">Syria

troubles.

France’s U.N. envoy said the council was “morally responsible” for the daily deaths by staying silent.

Russia, a key ally of Syria">Syria

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALMATY, Kazakhstan

Uzbekistan has failed to provide its citizens with basic legal rights despite some reforms in recent years, an international human rights group said Tuesday.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report that torture remains pervasive in the former Soviet Central Asian nation and that independent legal professionals and rights activists have been hindered in their work.

The United States, which relies on Uzbekistan as a major supply route for its troops in neighboring Afghanistan, has applied some pressure over rights issues, but activists say little has been done.

“Driven by a short-term interest in Uzbekistan’s strategic importance ... the U.S. and the (European Union) have failed to respond to Uzbekistan’s deepening human rights crisis,” HRW said in its report.

Uzbekistan has sought to respond to Western concerns about its rights record as it attempts to end the isolation that followed its brutal suppression of an uprising in the city of Andijan in 2005. The Uzbek authorities said 187 people were killed and had blamed Islamists for stoking the violence. But witnesses and rights groups said government troops killed hundreds.

Some of the legal reforms put in place by Uzbekistan included the introduction of the right of judicial review of pretrial detention and the broadening of defendant’s access to legal counsel.

The report said the government has failed to put those reforms into action and has used them to claim that it was gradually liberalizing its criminal justice system.

Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas raised the Palestinian flag outside UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris on Tuesday, a month after its admission to the UN cultural agency sparked anger and reprisals from the US and Israel.

This is the first time that the red, black, white and green Palestinian flag is flown at the headquarters of a United Nations institution.

“This is truly a historic moment. This admission is the first recognition of Palestine,” Abbas said. “Today, we are members of UNESCO and we hope we will have one independent state in the future that will live side-by-side with Israel.”

Abbas said he would continue to push for full UN membership.

The Israeli embassy in Paris said that “Israel regrets that an organization responsible for education and science was at the heart of making a decision based on science fiction by integrating an entity that has no legal status as a state,” according to the Reuters.

Myanmar authorities have agreed to Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition to rejoin mainstream politics, setting the scene for the Nobel laureate to run for a seat in the new parliament, as U.S. was "encouraged" by steps Myanmar has taken, Suu Kyi said, “I am very confident that if we work together... there will be no turning back from the road to democracy.”

In one of a number of dramatic developments, Suu Kyi has said she will take part in by-elections expected early next year, although no date has been set. The democracy champion voiced guarded hope earlier this month that democracy would come to Myanmar, as she welcomed Hillary Clinton to the home that was her prison for years during a landmark visit by the US Secretary of State.

Tuesday’s announcement in state media follows a series of reformist moves by a new military-backed government dominated by former generals, who are now reaching out to political opponents and the West. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) was stripped of its status as a legal political party by the junta last year after it chose to boycott a rare election, saying the rules were unfair.

Over the past year, Myanmar's authoritarian government has begun a transition to democracy that drew U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to this normally pariah nation because the U.S. was "encouraged" by steps Myanmar has taken.

Myanmar approved opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party to register for a coming election, state media said Tuesday, formally returning the pro-democracy group to the political arena.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The opposition Democratic Progressive Party sued Council for Economic Planning and Development Minister Christina Liu, the wife of Premier Wu Den-yih and three lawmakers Wednesday over the documents alleging presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen was guilty of conflict of interest.

On Monday, Liu presented documents purporting to show that Tsai was in charge of a government investment in biotech startup Yu Chang Biologics Co. when serving as vice premier in early 2007. However, Liu had to apologize one day later after theDPP showed the date on the document should have been five months later, when Tsai had already left government and was about to take charge as chairwoman of Yu Chang.

The DPP has accused Liu of conspiracy in a ruling Kuomintang plot trying to discredit Tsai a month before the January 14 presidential election pitting her against KMT incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou.

The opposition said it was suing five people for violating the Election and Recall Act. They had forged documents in order to prevent a candidate from winning an election, a punishable act under the law, the opposition party said.

Apart from Liu, the DPP was suing Tsai Ling-yi, the wife of Ma’s running mate Premier Wu, because she claimed at a rally in Penghu on December 11 that the opposition candidate moved millions from Yu Chang into her own accounts.

DPP attorney Hsu Kuo-yung said the party was suing outspoken KMT lawmaker Chiu Yi because the latter accused the opposition chairwoman of abusing her power and of pocketing government money.

Senior KMT lawmaker Lin Yi-shih was being taken to court because even though he knew Liu’s documents had been forged, he still held a news conference to propagate them, Hsu said.

The fifth and final person to be sued by the DPP was KMT lawmaker Hsieh Kuo-liang for accusing Tsai of knowing she would become chairwoman of Yu Chang when she was still vice premier, Hsu said.

The DPP chairwoman and several officials who served in government in 2007 say that she was never directly involved in the decision to invest in Yu Chang, and that she was only invited by prominent scientists to serve as Yu Chang chairwoman several months after she had left government.

At the Taipei Prosecutors’ Office Wednesday afternoon, the DPP also asked prosecutors to take control of the contested CEPD documents and demanded Liu’s resignation.

The second round of Egyptian parliamentary election’s result polling stations opened on Wednesday,

Islamists was looking to cement gains achieved in the first stage of voting last month.

According to BBC, it reported, the first round was held earlier this month which was dominated by Islamist parties with the party of the Muslim Brotherhood asserting nearly half of seats. In addition, Islamists are expected to seek on their success in second round to win more seats in the lower house of congress.

The elections are held since Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February as well as aimed at electing a parliament which will then appoint a committee to outline a new constitution for the post-revolution period.

The second round was held in nine regions including some outer districts of the capital, Cairo and that furthermore, in more rustic regions around the Nile Delta, traditionally a stronghold of political Islam.

Polling stations opened at 08:00 local time and voting will take place over two days and that moreover, two further rounds will be taken place in January before a presidential election is taken place in the middle of 2012.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A new International Committee for Fair Elections in Taiwan is likely to attract academics and former government officials from all over the world, reports said Wednesday.

Joseph Wu, the former Taiwan representative in the United States and former chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, is the driving force behind the new group, which will be officially launched at the Legislative Yuan Thursday.

Two of the candidates in Taiwan’s first-ever direct presidential election in 1996, former President Lee Teng-hui and then-Democratic Progressive Party candidate Peng Ming-min, will lead the group. Lee will serve as honorary chairman, while Peng will hold the function of chairman, reports said.

About a hundred prominent academics, human rights activists and former politicians from the US, Canada, Japan and Europe will form the committee, which would safeguard no outside force interfered with the right of voters to express their will through the ballot box, organizers said.

The committee was still unable to present a membership list Wednesday, reports said, but former US President Jimmy Carter reportedly turned down an invitation to join. Former Japanese Defense Minister Yuriko Koike was reportedly likely to join since she is a close friend of Lee, reports said. A number of Japanese academics, reporters and former officials with ties to Lee and to former Foreign Minister Tien Hung-mao are also likely to participate.

A large group of foreign committee members was planning to arrive in Taiwan on January 11, three days before the presidential election, in order to observe proceedings, the organizers said. They are also likely to stay and watch How President Ma Ying-jeou handles the transition of power if he loses the election to DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen.

The candidate elected on January 14 will only be sworn in more than four months later, on May 20, after what is the longest transition period in recent Taiwanese political history.

Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al Jaber Al-Sabah approved a new government formed by Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, the state-run KUNA news agency reported.

The ministers of oil, finance, foreign affairs, commerce, interior and defense in the new 11-member Cabinet remain the same, KUNA reported, citing an Emiri decree.

Sheikh Sabah dissolved parliament on Dec 6 and said elections should be held, after a dispute over corruption allegations sparked anti-government protests unprecedented in the Persian Gulf state.

New elections, according the constitution, must be held within 60 days of the dissolution of parliament.

The 10-minister cabinet will last until the announcement of the results of the parliamentary elections expected to be held in early February.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Special Prosecutors Office Special Investigation Division has started investigating three past investments by the government’s National Development Fund, including the politically sensitive Yu Chang case, reports said Wednesday.

The ruling Kuomintang and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party have been fighting a war of words over when DPP Chairwoman and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen knew she would become Yu Chang Biologics Co. chairwoman several months after leaving the function of vice premier in 2007.

Tsai denies she was involved in the early 2007 decision by the NDF to invest in Yu Chang, while the KMT claims she is guilty of conflict of interest. The dispute reached a new level when Council for Economic Planning and Development Minister Christina Liu admitted Tuesday she got the dates wrong on documents about the case.

The Chinese-language United Evening News reported Wednesday that special investigators visited the NDF management offices late on Tuesday to browse and read all documents related to the Yu Chang case and two other related files. Since the cases were complicated, the investigators took materials back with them, the paper said.

In a first reaction, DPP lawmaker Tsai Huang-liang said the prosecutors were being used as a political weapon in the hands of the KMT government. Reports suggested the special division might start interrogating prominent former officials involved in the NDF cases before the January 14 presidential and legislative elections.

The government was mobilizing lawmakers, ministers and the judiciary for a joint full-scale attack against the DPP’s presidential candidate in the final month of the election campaign, the lawmaker said.

At the heart of the cases were attempts to manufacture an HIV/AIDS treatment drug known as TNX-355. The NDF reportedly rejected an application by a group with links to influential former KMT lawmaker Kao Yu-jen, but approved the relatively similar bid by Yu Chang within a short period of time, the paper said.

In 2008, the NDF agreed to invest NT$875 million (US$28.9 million) in the venture capital arm of the TaiMed Group. The group only came up with NT$70 million (US$2.3 million) of the venture capital’s total capital of NT$3.5 billion (US$115 million), yet it demanded three seats on the board, the United Evening News reported.

The investigators would comb through the NDF files related to the three cases and discuss the eventual occurrence of legal problems, the paper said. The special division would investigate the eventual involvement of public officials but was unwilling to release more details to the media, the paper said. CEPD Minister Liu later confirmed the investigators’ visit to the press, reports said.

Taipei, Dec. 14 ( CNA) More than 80 percent of voters in the 20-39 age group with college degrees or higher have no knowledge of Taiwan's "single-member constituency, two vote" electoral system, according to the results of an online survey released Wednesday. The survey, which was conducted jointly by Business Today, Taipei Society and Citizen Congress Watch, showed that only 17.8 percent people in that age bracket are aware that they have one vote for a candidate running for a regional seat and another vote for a party in the Jan. 14 legislative election. Meanwhile, around 62.4 percent of young people see the nomination of legislators at-large as a form of political patronage, according to the survey. At the time of the poll, 48.4 percent of the respondents said they had not decided which party to vote for, while other 46.5 percent said they did not support any particular party. The "single-member constituency, two vote" electoral system was adopted in Taiwan in 2008 when the number of legislative seats was halved from 226 to 113 seats. Commenting on the poll, Citizen Congress Watch Chairman Ku Chung-hwa said young people generally lack political awareness. It is vital to educate them on how political issues affect their personal lives and the society, he said. This will encourage more young people to become involved in political activities, which in turn will help to improve the country's political climate, he said. The survey, which collected 1,071valid responses, had confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. ( By Tseng Ying-yu and Maia Huang)

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Nov 28 presidential election “lacked transparency,” calling into question the credibility of the results, the European Union’s electoral observation mission said.

The Central African country’s electoral commission announced incumbent President Joseph Kabila as winner on Dec 9, a ruling that was rejected by runner-up Etienne Tshisekedi, who declared himself the true president. Opposition parties have challenged the results at the Supreme Court.

The EU mission “deplores the lack of transparency and the irregularities in the collection, the compilation and the publication of results,” it said in an e-mailed statement. The problems “cannot but affect confidence in the results and their credibility.”

“Several polling station results published the night of the count and observed by our teams on the ground ... do not correspond with those published by the National Electoral Commission,” it said.

It also said officials had failed to count 7.6 percent of the roughly 64,000 polling stations nationwide, which it estimated excluded about 1.6 million people’s votes.

Despite of the fact that Defense chief Leon Panetta’s timetable told US militaries Wednesday they were winning the 10-year war in Afghanistan, during a visit focused on handing security to Afghans as US troops withdraw; however, the military and the United Nations disagree over the extent to which violence is really falling in Afghanistan.

Panetta is in Afghanistan to review the war effort with the United States, which is on track to recall 33,000 troops by the end of the next year and is shifting its focus to an advisory role in training Afghan security forces.

"We're moving in the right direction and we're winning this very tough conflict," he told troops at Forward Operating Base Sharana, 56 kilometres (35 miles) from the Pakistan border, in the eastern province of Paktika.

In October, the Pentagon said that Taliban attacks were down for the first time in five years but that insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan were feeding violence on the border and threatening the war effort.

"Are there challenges out there? You're damn right, there are challenges. Are we gonna be able to take on those challenges? You're damn right we will," Panetta told the troops.

On Dec. 7, Hsinchu City Mayor, Hsu Ming-tsai made an appointment of President of Tsing Hua University Chen Li-chun, the professors and students of Department of Computer Science who attended the competition of “SCC, Student Cluster Challenge” in the U.S.A and won the championship. The Mayor commended the students of Tsing Hua for their achievement once again and expected the professors and students of Department of Computer Science to win the honor for Taiwan again next year and continue to hold the title of “Proud of Taiwan”.

The competition of SCC organized by Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and Association of Computing Machinery is one of the top competitions in the realm of global high-performance computing. Only undergraduate students are qualified to attend, and the competition is divided into two sections, namely testing the speed of hardware computing for the first stage and testing the ability of handling the computer software for the second stage. Professor Chung Yeh-ching and Assistant Professor Lee Che-rung of Tsing Hua University led six students to attend the competition together. After a forty six-and half hour competition marathon, National Tsing Hua University won the first place and their outstanding performance has made Taiwan shine in the world.

The Mayor noted that at the moment it is an era of high-speed computing, in order to create more high quality English learning environment for the students, Hsinchu City Government has established the “cloud English ebook bookstore”, which contains nine hundred picture books for the kids. The Mayor expected to use the professional skills of the professors and students of Tsing Hua University to make the Hsinchu citizens enjoying the technology of living.

President of Tsing Hua University, Chen Li-chun appreciated Mayor Hsu for taking education seriously, and praise for his idea toward serving the public. “The difference between whether Tsing Hua is in Hisnchu City or not is whether Tsing Hua contributes to the local”, the President said. He also encouraged the teachers and students of Tsing Hua University to pass down the tradition of benefiting to the society and the nation generation to generation.

Professor Chung Yeh-ching emphasized that it was the 5th competition this year in US. The first time Tsing Hua University used the fastest speed computer, while they did not get any position. This year and last year, they used the lower speed computer, they won the championship. He indicated that all the students during the long-term competition marathon they were high-spirited. Hsu Ke-ron the student especially had not gone to bed for over 40 hours. His classmate Lai Yi-cheng made a joke for that because they were used to stay up all night.

According to AP, The Philippines relaunched an old U.S. Coast Guard cutter Wednesday as its biggest and most modern warship to guard potentially oil-rich waters that are at the center of a dispute with China.

President Benigno Aquino III witnessed the commissioning of the 3,390-ton Philippine navy frigate BRP Gregorio del Pilar in an austere Manila pier ceremony that he said symbolized his country's struggle to modernize its underfunded military despite many obstacles.

"As an archipelago with 36,000 nautical miles of coastline, it's important for us to have an adequate and formidable defense to guard our islands," Aquino said. He added that such a security shield could no longer be mounted "with dilapidated vessels and old and faulty equipment."

As a navy brass band played, Roman Catholic priests sprinkled holy water on the deck of the newly repainted warship, equipped with anti-aircraft guns and a newly refurbished surveillance helicopter on the flight deck. Three navy planes flew over and officials broke a bottle of sugarcane wine on the bow as the ship went into commission.

Officials also unveiled a smaller troop- and tank-carrying ship named BRP Tagbanua, the first of its kind to be assembled in the Philippines.

Taipei, Dec. 14 (CNA) The Legislature amended a law Wednesday to ban the sale of public land plots larger than 1,650 square meters, a move that analysts said will help stop speculating in that market. The amendment to the National Property Act was proposed by Kuomintang Legislator Lai Shyh-bao, who said the current management of public land leaves much to be desired. He noted that the Control Yuan, the nation's highest watchdog body, had repeatedly asked the government improve its poor management of the valuable public resource. Selling state land through open bids brings "more harm than benefit," he said. Under the revised National Property Act, the sale of all vacant and unused public land will be prohibited except in special cases approved by the Executive Yuan, he said. The Executive Yuan in October 2009 introduced regulations that prohibited the sale of public land plots of over 500 pings (1,650 square meters), Finance Minister Lee Sush-der noted. The Ministry of Finance then put forth a strategy for managing national property, which calls for establishing the proper ownership of each plot of public land and encouraging its use in urban rejuvenation projects. The MOF policy also encourages joint development of publicly owned real estate with government agencies or private developers, Lee said. Lee noted that the National Property Bureau under the MOF had stopped putting up public land in Taipei City for tender since March 2, 2010 and had even launched a program to buy back public land that had been sold to private entities. All these policy initiatives were aimed at increasing the efficacy of public land use and preventing private developers from hoarding land and profiting from such actions, the minister said. With the government already taking several initiatives to improve its management of public land, Lai's proposal sailed through the Legislature. The opposition party caucus supported a change in the wording of the bill, from "in principle cannot be sold" to "must not be sold." Lai said the more stringent terms of the amendment were "very good." It means that public land plots over 1,650 square meters cannot be sold now, which will give future generations more room to manage their living spaces, he said. (By Justin Su and S.C. Chang)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The well-known Ming Hwa Yuan Taiwanese Opera Troupe denied media allegations Wednesday that it was making propaganda for the ruling Kuomintang in return for subsidies from the government.

The popular group had received NT$280 million (US$9.2 million) from the government and was now appearing at KMT campaign events for the January 14 presidential and legislative elections, Next Magazine reported Wednesday.

Opposition Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Tsai Huang-liang said the Ma administration had problems with its distribution of funds. Another Taiwanese opera troupe only received NT$1.19 million (US$39,000) from the government over three years, yet Ming Hwa Yuan managed to obtain NT$280 million, he said.

Ming Hwa Yuan chief Chen Sheng-fu said that if Next did not apologize within two days, he would consider further legal action.

He said that his troupe was one of many cultural groups receiving government subsidies, and that it was usually not allowing election candidates to mount the stage to address the public.

Chen also criticized the picture Next chose to put in the report. The photo, showing the troupe with President Ma Ying-jeou and his campaign number 2, was taken in 2007 when Ming Hwa Yuan gave a free performance, Chen said. At the time, Ma was also running for president as No.2, he said, which could lead readers to believe the picture was recent.

A series of KMT lawmakers named in the Next article as having invited the Taiwanese opera group to perform all denied the allegations. Tsai Cheng-yuan said he had invited Ming Hwa Yuan twice but had never applied for government subsidies for the event. Hsu Shu-po said he sponsored cultural events every year, not just at election time, while Lin Yu-fang said he only helped organize the event. There were no campaign banners, nobody handed out campaign flyers and he had never mentioned the elections in his address, Lin said.

Next Magazine said it would not comment on the reactions from the Ming Hwa Yuan officials and from lawmakers.

Taipei, Dec. 14 (CNA) The visiting U.S. deputy secretary of energy said Wednesday after a visit to a nuclear plant the previous day that he is impressed by Taiwan's efforts to maintain nuclear safety and promote carbon-free energy solutions. Daniel Poneman said after a meeting with Foreign Minister Timothy Yang that Taiwan's preventive measures to minimize the nuclear threat both before and after the Fukushima incident in Japan earlier this year are especially impressive. In addition to the country's nuclear plant safety, he applauded the strong cooperation between the United States and Taiwan in the field of nuclear security. The establishment of nuclear detectors at large ports, for example, can successfully intercept radioactive materials and ensure a safer society, he said. Poneman is the highest-ranking U.S. government official to visit Taiwan in over a decade. He has been in Taipei since Dec. 12, meeting senior government officials and business leaders as well as giving an address at National Taiwan University on energy cooperation. Poneman described the meetings he attended during his three-day trip as "robust, productive and fruitful" and he emphasized the importance of Taiwan's participation in more multilateral organizations and institutions. He was scheduled to leave for Japan later Wednesday to discuss nuclear energy and safety issues with officials there. Meanwhile, Yang told the media that Poneman's trip not only highlights the solidity of Taiwan-U.S. relations, but also demonstrates the great steps taken by both sides in bilateral collaboration over the years. His visit exhibits Taiwan's significant role in the Asia-Pacific region, said Yang, as he referred to a statement made by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Hawaii last month, which stressed Taiwan was the U.S.'s important partner in economic issues and regional security. Although he did not reveal the details of the discussion, the minister said that both parties exchanged views on "important issues," citing subjects such as green energy and radioactive detection measures at sea ports. (By Nancy Liu)

Taipei, Dec. 14 (CNA) The United States has agreed to review the content of an agreement that grants Taiwanese diplomats immunity privileges, Foreign Minister Timothy Yang said Wednesday, one month after a Taiwanese diplomat was detained in Kansas City on labor fraud charges. Yang said the detention highlighted the incompleteness of the agreement and noted that the U.S. authorities have agreed to discuss what needs to be added with their Taiwanese counterparts soon. The Agreement on Privileges, Exemptions and Immunities between Taiwan's Coordination Council for North American Affairs and the American Institute in Taiwan was signed Oct. 2, 1980. Jacqueline Liu, director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Kansas City, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Nov. 11 and charged with underpaying and overworking her Filipina housekeeper. She remains in detention in Kansas City, despite her diplomatic status. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has formed an ad-hoc investigative team to look into the controversial case and an initial report has been filed, Yang said. Asked by the local media whether Liu is being paid a regular diplomatic salary while in custody, the minister said yes but the department of personnel will discuss relevant issues with her in the future. U.S. District Judge David Gregory Kays, the judge hearing Liu's case, delayed ruling on a plea bargain agreement before Thanksgiving and the Taiwanese diplomat might have to wait months before her release. Kays said he needed more time to consider the plea agreement, and an investigation report by probation officials is to be completed before the next hearing, which could take as long as 72 days, according to Liu's lawyer James Wirken. Yang updated the media on the issue, saying that a probation officer report has been published by the U.S. and that both Kays and Wirken have obtained a copy. (By Nancy Liu)

Taipei, Dec. 14 (CNA) The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against five people, including the head of the nation's top economic planning agency, for forgery and violating the election law by attempting to hurt the chances of its presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen in the Jan. 14 election. The DPP threatened a day earlier to sue Christina Liu, minister of the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), if she didn't apologize for implicating Tsai in connection with a government decision to invest in the biotech company TaiMed Inc. while Tsai was vice premier in 2007. The DPP went ahead with the lawsuit despite Liu's statement Tuesday night that she was sorry for causing a controversy over the date of a meeting regarding the establishment of TaiMed in cooperation with the U.S. firm Genentech. The DPP said that the CEPD file given to lawmakers showed that Tsai was among the initiators of the TaiMed company when a meeting to raise capital was held March 31, 2007. However, the meeting actually took place in August that year, and the file was dated Aug. 31, but Tsai had already left the Cabinet in May, the DPP said. Liu explained Tuesday that the mistake was due to her staff having had to sort through many files within a short period of time. The three ruling Kuomintang legislators named in the suit are Chiu Yi, Hsieh Kuo-liang and Lin Yi-shih. Chiu was sued for saying that Tsai had abused her position and lied, and for alleging that Tsai had not put her family's money into the company, but rather had used state funds to help finance TaiMed. Both Lin and Hsieh were sued for citing incorrect information provided by Liu. Tsai Ling-yi, wife of Premier Wu Den-yih, was also named as a defendant for alleging in a campaign rally in the outlying island of Penghu Sunday that Tsai Ing-wen had channeled NT$1.1 billion of government fund into her "family's company" and that "it's dumb to donate piggy banks to them," referring to the DPP's campaign fundraising. Tsai Huang-liang, DPP legislative whip, said at a news conference earlier in the day that Liu knew Tsai Ing-wen was not among the major leaders of TaiMed but had deliberately forged a document to try to incriminate her and hurt her chances of winning the presidential election. "Liu should step down and prosecutors should take the initiative to investigate the matter," said Tsai Huang-liang. In response, Liu issued a statement Wednesday, dismissing the DPP allegation that she had acted as a Tsai-basher for the ruling party in the runup to the presidential election. Liu said she had not touched the information previously and had only sorted through it at the request of the Legislature to clarify Tsai Ing-wen's role in the birth of the company. "I wish the public would not politicize the issue, as I've not compromised my administrative neutrality," Liu said. KMT lawmaker Chiu said "this is an old gambit by the DPP to try to shift focus of the case." Lin and Hsieh also said that it is time for Tsai Ing-wen to honestly explain why she had quit the vice premier job to become TaiMed chairwoman. Meanwhile, Premier Wu said his wife's remarks were not groundless, as the government investment in TaiMed was even bigger than she had said. Four days before the March 22, 2008 election, the DPP administration approved an investment of NT$875 million in the company, but the money was not appropriated after the KMT administration took over, Wu said. (By Lin Sheng-hsu, Wen Kuei-hsiang and Lilian Wu)