The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday that Taiwan's donation of US$5 million to Panama was part of a bilateral humanitarian cooperation program and not an example of checkbook diplomacy as claimed in a local newspaper.
Yeh Fei-bi (
She was responding to reports by the Chinese-language China Times, which quoted La Prensa, a Panamanian newspaper, as saying that Taiwan's Ambassador, Hou Ping-fu (
Following La Prensa's report, the Panamanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated on Wednesday that the donation ceremony was held openly, but was not widely known about until it was reported in the press.
HUMANITARIAN AID
Yeh stressed that the donation was part of a humanitarian cooperation program between the two nations.
The donation was intended for a charity project presided over by the first lady's office, chiefly to help establish easily accessible facilities for the disabled and provide them with vocational training and counselling.
Yeh noted that the first lady's office had said that the donation would not be managed by the office, but rather by a bureau responsible for the nation's physically challenged under the Presidential Office.
She noted that Lewis, while accepting the donation in a ceremony on Jan. 17, said that the money would be channeled into the nation's coffers in an efficient and transparent way.
The management will be subject to the supervision of an auditing agency and Taiwan had no need to worry that the funds would end up lining the pockets of certain individuals, Yeh 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:
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
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