Former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) office yesterday dismissed a report that his daughter Chen Hsing-yu (陳幸妤) had attempted suicide last month after learning about a court order barring her from leaving the country.
The travel ban was imposed after she was questioned by prosecutors on June 22 about allegations of perjury. She had planned on traveling to the US to study.
The latest edition of the Chinese-language China Times Weekly said Chen Hsing-yu swallowed sleeping pills after learning about the court order. Her mother Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍) and her husband, Chao Chien-ming (趙建銘), called doctors to the house to give her emergency treatment, the magazine said.
Chiang Chih-ming (江志銘), Chen Shui-bian’s secretary, denied the report and said Chen Hsing-yu had not tried to commit suicide.
Chen Hsing-yu had filed a petition with the Taipei District Prosecutors Office appealing for a lifting of the overseas travel ban. Prosecutors rejected the appeal on June 30 on the grounds that she was required to stay in Taiwan to ensure the smooth progress of the investigation into alleged corruption by her parents, as well as to the perjury she has admitted to.
Asked to comment on the magazine story, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) said she was skeptical about the report.
Lo said she sympathized with Chen Hsing-yu for losing her temper when approached by reporters but said Chen Hsing-yu should blame her father for causing her “tragedy.”
Chen Shui-bian, his wife, son Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), daughter-in-law Huang Jui-ching (黃睿靚) and 10 former presidential aides, associates and family members have been indicted by prosecutors on a range of charges, including money laundering, corruption and forgery.
Meanwhile, Wu was discharged from the Kaohsiung Medical University Chung-Ho Memorial Hospital yesterday, one day after being hospitalized for low blood pressure.
Hospital vice superintendent Liu Chiung-kuan (劉景寬) said Wu has suffered bleeding caused by severe constipation that triggered the low blood pressure.
Chen Chih-chung said his mother’s condition had stabilized and she wanted to return home as soon as possible even though the hospital wanted her to stay longer. The hospital later agreed to discharge her.
Wu was paralyzed from the waist down after being hit by a truck in an alleged assassination attempt in 1985 and has had to use a wheelchair since then.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG AND CNA
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