Taiwan People’s Party leader Ko Wen-je freed after court finds insufficient evidence to justify his detention.

A court in Taiwan has ordered the release of a former mayor and presidential candidate who was arrested over his alleged role in a corruption scandal, citing insufficient evidence for his detention.

Taipei District Court on Monday ruled that Ko Wen-je, a former mayor of Taipei and the leader of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), should go free after finding that prosecutors had failed to make the case for his detention.

The court said prosecutors had not met the standard of there being a “high possibility” Ko had committed a crime.

“It cannot be concluded that the defendant… knowingly violated the law,” the court said in its ruling.

Ko was arrested on Saturday as part of a probe into alleged corruption in the redevelopment of the Core Pacific City shopping centre in the Taiwanese capital.

Ko, who came third in January’s presidential election, told reporters outside court that there was “no evidence” of his involvement in the real estate scandal.

A surgeon by training, Ko entered politics in 2014 when he successfully ran for the mayorship of Taipei as an independent candidate.

Re-elected as mayor of Taipei in 2018, he founded the TPP the following year as a third force to challenge the dominance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and China-leaning Kuomintang (KMT).

Under the TPP banner, Ko received about one-quarter of the vote in the last presidential election, which was won by the DPP’s William Lai Ching-te.

While the TPP has only eight legislators in Taiwan’s 113-seat parliament, the party has gained outsized influence as both the DPP and KMT lack a ruling majority.

Ko, who draws much of his support from young people, is widely seen as a contender for the next election in 2028, although his popularity has been dented by a separate campaign funds scandal.

On Thursday, Ko said he would take a three-month leave of absence from the TPP leadership to take responsibility for the misreporting of campaign money and the use of election subsidies to set up a personal office space.

Brad Pitt and George Clooney hugged and danced at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday night as the two megastars’ latest film, “Wolfs,” received a polite four-minute standing ovation.

The premiere itself was delayed by more than 30 minutes as fans crowded into Venice’s Sala Grande in an attempt to catch a glimpse at Pitt and Clooney. When the duo finally arrived inside, the sound — and general vibe — in the theater could only be described as carnal. Both actors took to different sides of the carpet, signing autographs and taking selfies, before being whisked away to their seats by security.

As the two stars entered the theater, they greeted the eager crowd with a booming “Buonasera!,” prompting some fans to shout back in hopes of being noticed. Even as the film began rolling, the chaos continued, with those without tickets scrambling to find any empty seats. Some were ejected during the early scenes in the film as latecomers entered.

When the credits rolled on the crime romp, Pitt and Clooney hugged it out before grooving to Sade’s “Smooth Operator.” Clooney then turned to his wife Amal, and the two shared a sweet kiss. He and Pitt then walked down the stairs, from the balcony of the theater where they were seated, to greet the cheering fans.

The four-minute ovation was perhaps not as long as one may have expected given Pitt and Clooney’s star power, but it seemed that festival officials were keen on getting audience members out of the theater given the premiere’s late start time and unruly energy.

Pitt landed in Venice only two days after his ex Angelina Jolie debuted her latest movie “Maria” here, to an eight-minute standing ovation and Oscar buzz. Neither mentioned their long pending divorce, and Pitt wasn’t asked at a press conference on Sunday about court documents that allege “a history of physical abuse of Jolie” in their marriage. (The hashtag #BradPittIsAnAbuser trended on the social media platform X shortly after “Wolfs” premiered.)

Written and directed by “Spider-Man” helmer Jon Watts (who had to miss the premiere after testing positive for COVID), the Apple Original Films action-comedy stars Pitt and Clooney as two professional fixers who prefer to work alone, but must come together after being hired for the same job. “Wolfs” also stars Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams and Poorna Jagannathan. A sequel to the film is already in development with Watts and the two stars attached, Apple announced earlier this month.

“Wolfs” marks Pitt and Clooney’s first time co-headlining a film since the Coen Brother’s 2008 black comedy “Burn After Reading.” Prior to that, the two were co-stars in the “Ocean’s” franchise from 2001 to 2007. Both actors have graced the Lido before, with Clooney attending in 2009 for Grant Heslov’s “The Men Who Stare at Goats” and Pitt having premiered David Fincher’s “Fight Club” in 1999 and earning the Volpi Cup for best actor with Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” in 2007.

In a recent cover story for GQ, Pitt and Clooney discussed their longtime friendship and the state of Hollywood today. “They haven’t developed stars the way the studio system used to,” Clooney said. “We kind of were at the very end of that, where you could work at a studio and do three or four films, and there was some plan to it. And I don’t think that’s necessarily the case anymore. So it’s harder for you to sell somebody something on the back of a star.”

After its Venice premiere, “Wolfs” will release in theaters for a limited time starting Sept. 20 before debuting on Apple TV+ on Sept. 27.

JERUSALEM – The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, is facing a barrage of criticism for failing to explicitly condemn the Hamas terrorist movement for its murders of one American and five Israeli citizens on Saturday.

Israel Defense Forces were looking to rescue the six hostages held by Hamas, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, in the tunnel system below Gaza’s Rafah city, but instead found all six murdered at the hands of the terror group. The Times of Israel, quoting Israel’s ministry of health, reported that the hostages had been murdered between Thursday and Friday morning. 

Guterres wrote on X, “I will never forget my meeting last October with the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and other hostage families. Today’s tragic news is a devastating reminder of the need for the unconditional release of all hostages and an end to the nightmare of war in Gaza.”

ISRAEL SHARES DOSSIER SPELLING OUT ALLEGATIONS AGAINST 12 UN EMPLOYEES ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED IN HAMAS ATTACK 

Guterres’ post on X sparked criticism from Israel’s former U.N. ambassador Gilad Erdan for playing down the severity of the murders by labeling the news as merely “tragic” and not condemning Hamas outright. 

Guterres’ spokesman did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital press query.

Erdan, who only left his role as ambassador last month, told Fox News Digital , “The Secretary General not only has Israeli blood on his hands, but he has American blood on his hands too. Since his “fig leaf” meeting with the hostage families, he has done ZERO to help them. He could have demanded visits from the Red Cross, he could have condemned Hamas and held them to account, but instead he spent his time criticizing the law-abiding democracy of Israel instead of the ISIS-like terrorists.”
 

Erdan continued “This is a new low, even for the Secretary General. Even today, he wouldn’t condemn the evil Hamas terrorists, but of course, you can’t condemn what you support. Hamas terrorists can rely on a morally bankrupt Secretary General for their survival whose only actions are meaningless photo-ops with hostage families, and criticism of Israel, while innocent hostages are being executed in cold blood.”

Thousands of Israelis gathered in Ra’anana to pay their final respects to Almog Sarusi. Hamas abducted the 26-year-old sound and light technician from the Nova Music Festival and killed him in captivity. Israeli soldiers recovered his body along with five others on Saturday.  (Yossi Zeliger/TPS-IL)

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the president of Human Rights Voices, told Fox News Digital that “U.N. Secretary-General Guterres despicably now turns the cold-blooded murder of Israeli hostages by Palestinian terrorists into a win for the terrorists. He refuses to name the perpetrators. And equates their horrible deliberate execution with Israel’s effort to release them.”

A terrorist from Hamas takes part in a military parade. Three Palestinian migrants caught at the southern border were detained after they were allegedly found to have terrorist ties.  (Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File Photo)

She added “The United Nations top apparatus – its Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council – has never specifically condemned Hamas. U.N. denial of the right of Israeli self-defense and its promotion of violence against the people of Israel has never been more clear. No amount of U.N. photo-ops with hostages or their families will erase the reality of the U.N.’s insidious role in the nightmare of war in Israel for seven decades.”

UN, HUMAN RIGHTS, MEDIA GROUPS RELY ON HAMAS DEATH TOLL IN ‘SYSTEMATIC DECEPTION’: EXPERT

TOPSHOT – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a United Nations Security Council meeting on Gaza, at UN headquarters in New York City on December 8, 2023. Guterres said on December 8, 2023, that Hamas’ brutality could never justify “collective punishment” of Palestinians as Israel presses its campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.  (Photo by YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images)

In October, Erdan urged Guterres to resign after he claimed that the head of the world body had suggested that Israel was to blame for Hamas’ October 7 massacre that resulted in the murders of nearly 1,200 people, including more than 30 American citizens, and the kidnapping of over 250 people. Guterres came out to refute Erdan’s charges, but the United Nations has long been seen by critics as a bastion of antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.

A bloodied handprint stains a wall in a Nir Oz house after Hamas terrorists attacked this kibbutz days earlier near the border of Gaza. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

On Guterres’ watch, a number of U.N. agencies have been embroiled in scandals where they showed sympathy for Hamas. The scandal-plagued United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is facing a lawsuit in Manhattan for its alleged role in aiding the terrorist movement Hamas’ slaughter on October 7.

Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, lambasted Guterres’ decision to not name the perpetrators of the mass murder of the six people. “Hamas just murdered six Israeli and American hostages by shooting them in the head. Why can’t you say so? Why can’t you condemn them?,” wrote Neuer in a post on X.

Hamas is not on the United Nations’ list of terrorist organizations. Fox News Digital sent press queries to Israel’s current U.N. ambassador and the country’s foreign ministry.