The president defended the appointment of his deputy chief of staff to the nation's top foreign affairs post while meeting foreign diplomats in Taipei yesterday, saying that he would have the support of the man he is replacing.
New foreign affairs personnel will help Taiwan explore its international space by adopting effective strategies, President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen made the comments while receiving representatives from Paraguay, including Senate chairman Carlos Alberto Filizzola.
The president's arrangement of new foreign affairs officials has been criticized by the opposition parties. In particular, Huang's relative lack of experience in serving high-level diplomatic positions has been described as "a negative."
Chen said that the new officials, including incoming Presidential Office Secretary-General Mark Chen (
The president said that Mark Chen had decades of experience in foreign affairs, while Huang had successfully initiated the Jung Pang Project, which promotes investment in Taiwan's diplomatic allies in Central America.
"I'm sure these two capable people will improve bilateral relations. Paraguay will definitely benefit from ... the Jung Pang Project," Chen Shui-bian said.
Filizzola said he looked forward to improved collaboration in social welfare, agriculture and industry, and expressed confidence that Huang would be able to improve relations as head of the foreign ministry.
However, People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
Huang responded yesterday.
"I've visited about 70 countries and planned more than 10 of the president's overseas trips. It's true that I've never been an official representative of Taiwan overseas, but my experience might exceed that of high-ranking officials," Huang told the media.
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