Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (
Huang was referring to the so-called "South Route Project" referred to by a mysterious source in the Presidential Office. According to the source, the government commissioned an investor based in Australia to work to enhance the relationship between Taiwan and that country.
The source made the "revelation" after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (
Chiu alleged that these receipts, issued originally to an Australian-based Taiwanese designer, were used by first lady Wu Shu-chen (吳淑珍) to seek reimbursement for her own expenses.
Huang, who was deputy secretary-general of the Presidential Office before becoming the foreign minister in January, said last Thursday that he had never heard of a "South Route Project."
Chiu said that Huang's ignorance of the project proved that it had never existed, but was something the Presidential Office had cooked up to explain away the falsified receipts.
However, Huang said yesterday that secret diplomatic missions were frequently controlled by individuals abroad, who were responsible only to a limited number of officials directly involved in the project.
Huang said that although he wasn't personally involved in the project and had no knowledge of it, this did not mean that it had not existed.
He said that the three top presidential officials -- the presidential secretary-general and his two deputies -- were constantly involved in overseeing confidential diplomatic undertakings, many of which involved work by single individuals abroad. It was quite plausible, he said, that one official would have no knowledge of another's secret projects.
"The assertions by some media outlets and an opposition politician that the fact that the foreign minister was not aware of the `South Route Project' proves that there was no such thing are false," Huang said.
"It is normal that not many people know about the `South Route Project.' Actually, it would be abnormal if too many people knew about it," Huang said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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