Regular readers of Pop Stop will know that popular television host Hu Gua’s (胡瓜) son-in-law, Li Jin-liang (李進良), has been more than a handful even before his June nuptials to Hu’s daughter. Before getting hitched to Hu Ying-chen (胡盈禎), Li allegedly carried on an affair with starlet Mao Mao (毛毛). His past misadventures include charges of sexual harassment by a Japanese porn star and an all-night party with two friends and three hostesses at a Taipei hotel.
But Li may have turned out to be an even bigger boob than either of the Hus imagined. The plastic surgeon was recently fined NT$150,000 and ordered to stop working for three months by the Taipei Department of Health after illegally inserting silicone breast implants into a patient. The enhancers are only allowed for breast reconstruction surgery — the merely vain must content themselves with saline-filled breast implants.
Li admitted to wrongful use of the artificial lady lumps, but defended himself by insisting many of his colleagues do the same thing. A United Daily News report showed that Li’s Web site plugged silicone breast implants for NT$200,000 but did not mention they were limited to reconstruction surgery only. The article helpfully explained that women with “airport physiques” (飛機場體質) prefer silicone because saline implants look less natural on skinny bodies. In the interest of fairness, the United Daily News also added that many other plastic surgery clinic Web sites tout silicone breast implants without explaining the legal limitations on their use.
But Li’s troubles did not stop with the Department of Health. The patient, Hong Mei-nai (洪美奈), claimed at several dramatic press conferences that Li never acted with the breast of intentions. She said the silicone implants were inserted without her consent and that Li also neglected to provide follow-up care when one of the jelly rolls allegedly leaked after
the operation.
A few days after the punishment was levied against Li, Hong, who claimed the fine was too light, “staggered” to the entrance of the district prosecutor’s office with her lawyer and banged on the door in front of a clutch of reporters. Our sister paper the Liberty Times reported that Hong wants to charge Li with professional negligence and slander for claiming that she allegedly tried to extort the clinic for money after the ill-fated operation. She also complained that Li had yet to reach out to her for a settlement or even to apologize. Li’s lawyer responded that he and his client were still in the process of preparing a response to Hong’s accusations.
Hong has been a constant presence in the media since news of the scandal broke about two weeks ago. At a previous gathering, she sobbed while jabbing her left armpit with a pair of scissors, explaining she couldn’t feel a thing. “After the surgery, I was like a handicapped person,” she said. “I couldn’t get out of bed. All I could do was lie there and wet myself.” In addition to the numbness and physical weakness, she says she now suffers from anemia, an irregular heartbeat and mental exhaustion. And, Hong tearfully added, she was forced to postpone her upcoming wedding in the US.
Li could take a page from the life of Eason Chan (陳奕迅) on how to be family man. Oriental Sunday reports that the Hong Kong pop singer and actor has yet to kick his longtime nicotine habit, but sneaks outdoors and smokes in parking lots so his wife, Hilary Tsui (徐濠縈), and school-age daughter won’t have to inhale secondhand smoke. The couple was rumored to have weathered marital troubles last summer, but the storm seems to have passed. Oriental Sunday says that Chan is so busy with his upcoming record that he counts on Tsui to look after their child’s education. The doting mum carries her daughter’s heavy book bag all the way to the school door and picks her up after classes to send her to an English-language buxiban. Tsui was overheard reminding her daughter to study hard “so daddy doesn’t worry about you.”
The Nuremberg trials have inspired filmmakers before, from Stanley Kramer’s 1961 drama to the 2000 television miniseries with Alec Baldwin and Brian Cox. But for the latest take, Nuremberg, writer-director James Vanderbilt focuses on a lesser-known figure: The US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who after the war was assigned to supervise and evaluate captured Nazi leaders to ensure they were fit for trial (and also keep them alive). But his is a name that had been largely forgotten: He wasn’t even a character in the miniseries. Kelley, portrayed in the film by Rami Malek, was an ambitious sort who saw in
It’s always a pleasure to see something one has long advocated slowly become reality. The late August visit of a delegation to the Philippines led by Deputy Minister of Agriculture Huang Chao-ching (黃昭欽), Chair of Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association Joseph Lyu (呂桔誠) and US-Taiwan Business Council vice president, Lotta Danielsson, was yet another example of how the two nations are drawing closer together. The security threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), along with their complementary economies, is finally fostering growth in ties. Interestingly, officials from both sides often refer to a shared Austronesian heritage when arguing for
Among the Nazis who were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 was Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Goring. Less widely known, though, is the involvement of the US psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who spent more than 80 hours interviewing and assessing Goring and 21 other Nazi officials prior to the trials. As described in Jack El-Hai’s 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Kelley was charmed by Goring but also haunted by his own conclusion that the Nazis’ atrocities were not specific to that time and place or to those people: they could in fact happen anywhere. He was ultimately
Last week gave us the droll little comedy of People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) consul general in Osaka posting a threat on X in response to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi saying to the Diet that a Chinese attack on Taiwan may be an “existential threat” to Japan. That would allow Japanese Self Defence Forces to respond militarily. The PRC representative then said that if a “filthy neck sticks itself in uninvited, we will cut it off without a moment’s hesitation. Are you prepared for that?” This was widely, and probably deliberately, construed as a threat to behead Takaichi, though it
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