President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday denied speculation that his eldest daughter, Lesley Ma (馬唯中), had returned from the US to arrange her wedding.
Ma said that while he did not seek to avoid the media on the matter, it was not necessary to announce his daughter’s personal schedule because she was not a public figure.
“It is enough that there are two public figures in my family,” he said. “We would not and could not hide it if there was a wedding going on.”
Ma made the remarks in Pingtung County yesterday afternoon during a visit to Aboriginal schools and communities.
Yesterday was the first time Ma had taken the presidential aircraft since its exterior was repainted in its original colors. It was compared to a “big frog” and nicknamed the “toothpaste plane” after its bottom was painted green when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was president.
Asked about a planned trip abroad, Ma said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would make the announcement this week.
The ministry has been arranging for Ma to attend the June 1 inauguration of El Salvadoran president-elect Mauricio Funes.
Ma is also likely to visit Panama in July to attend the inauguration of the country’s next president. Central and South America and the Caribbean are Taiwan’s diplomatic strongholds, with many of its 23 diplomatic allies located there.
Ma is also likely to attend a summit meeting between the leaders of Taiwan and its South Pacific allies in August or September in the Solomon Islands.
Meanwhile, Ma dismissed speculation that he had forced Minister without Portfolio Chu Yun-peng (朱雲鵬) to resign, adding that Chu’s character and his family’s expectations were behind the decision.
Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) approved Chu’s resignation on Saturday night after Chu admitted he had skipped work to go on dates during office hours.
Ma said that while he was saddened to part with the economist, both he and Liu respected Chu’s decision, Ma said.
Ma said Chu’s case was different from that of National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi’s (蘇起) wife, Chen Yue-ching (陳月卿), because Chen was not a civil servant and she did not violate any rules.
Chen raised eyebrows when she went to China to promote her new book early this month.
She told TV reporters in Beijing that there were no regulations preventing her from traveling.
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