Costa Rican President Oscar Arias denied any knowledge of a US$1.5 million donation from Taiwan for his country’s poor, but which allegedly was diverted for pet projects elsewhere in the government.
“I had no knowledge of this help from the government of Taiwan which I learned about from the press just recently,” he said in remarks published on Saturday in the La Nacion newspaper.
La Nacion earlier this month alleged that the office of Arias’ brother and chief of staff, Rodriguez Arias, paid scores of government consultants with US$2 million that had been donated by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE).
Funds were sent by Taiwan to BCIE at the request of Costa Rican Housing Minister Fernando Zumbado, according to press reports, which have said the sum of the wire transfer was US$2.5 million.
Zumbado admits to having received only US$1.5 million. The minister has been suspended from his post pending a congressional investigation.
News reports said donations made by Taiwan in 2006 were destined for the construction of housing for the poor, but never got to the intended recipients.
Costa Rica broke its ties with Taiwan in June last year, and instead established relations with the Chinese government in Beijing.
Arias won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to end civil wars in several Central American countries.
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