The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday denounced a report alleging that former first lady Tseng Wen-hui (
"It's impossible for her to possess three passports at the same time. This allegation is totally wrong," Chan Hsien-ching (詹憲卿), director-general of the ministry's Bureau of Consular Affairs, told the Taipei Times.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday began an investigative hearing into a slander case being contested by Tseng and three New Party members.
In April, Tseng filed an appeal at the Taiwan High Court following a slander case against former New Party legislators Elmer Feng (
The three New Party members filed a lawsuit against Tseng after the 2000 presidential election, accusing her of "trying to flee to New York with US$85 million in cash stuffed into 54 suitcases."
At the original trial, Tseng said she had only one valid passport at the time she was alleged to have tried to fly to New York.
The court asked the bureau for details of all passports Tseng had held.
A report in a Chinese-language newspaper said the court had a written document from the foreign ministry that said Tseng, at the time of the presidential election, held three passports.
Two standard passports were issued on June 21, 1994 and Jan. 4, 1995, the report said. She also possessed a diplomatic passport, which was issued on June 22, 1996, it said.
But according to the bureau files, "She has had four passports in the past. But she hasn't held them concurrently," Chan said.
"According to passport regulations, once a citizen applies for a new passport for whatever reason, one corner on the old one would be cut, rendering it null and void even if its expiry date had not passed," Chan said.
A foreign ministry press release also denied the newspaper report.
The Taiwan High Court is still considering both sides' appeals.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching