President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said on Thursday that he had no immediate plans to reduce Vice President Vincent Siew’s (蕭萬長) workload after the 70-year-old Siew underwent lung surgery last week.
Two malignant tumors were removed from Siew’s left lung last Wednesday at Taipei Veterans General Hospital.
Siew will remain hospitalized until sometime next week. There has been no word on whether he will receive chemotherapy.
Ma, who is on a 10-day trip to Central America, shrugged off concerns about Siew’s workload during a press conference with Taiwanese press in Belize. He said Siew was recovering well after surgery and it shouldn’t be a problem for him to return to work soon.
“So far there’s no need to make any changes [to Siew’s workload] ... Vice President Siew feels good and is making a good recovery. He should be able to return to work soon,” Ma said.
He said he had contacted Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) on Thursday after a large swathe of Central America was rocked by a large earthquake off the coast of Honduras on Thursday morning and Liu gave him an update on Siew.
Ma said Liu had told him that Siew was in better condition than media reports had indicated and he should be able to return to work after recuperating from surgery.
The Taiwanese delegation was unaffected by the earthquake.
Ma was scheduled to travel to Guatemala yesterday for a two-day visit before heading to El Salvador, where he will attend the inauguration of president-elect Mauricio Funes on Monday.
Also See: El Salvador’s Funes attends Paris trial for his son’s murder
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
UNITED: The other candidates congratulated Cheng on her win, saying they hoped the new chair could bring the party to victory in the elections next year and in 2028 Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday won the party’s chair election with 65,122 votes, or 50.15 percent of the votes. It was the first time Cheng, 55, ran for the top KMT post, and she is the second woman to hold the post of chair, following Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who served from 2016 to 2017. Cheng is to succeed incumbent Eric Chu (朱立倫) on Nov. 1 for a four-year term. Cheng said she has spoken with the other five candidates and pledged to maintain party unity, adding that the party would aim to win the elections next year and
RSS