Ho Ching (何晶), the wife of Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍), on Thursday apologized to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) for sharing a video on Facebook that criticized the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Ho wrote on Facebook a day earlier about meeting a Singaporean woman whose son suffered from serious tinnitus — a loud, persistent ringing in his ear — but who recovered after receiving treatment in Taiwan.
“Taiwan was a life saver for the son,” Ho wrote. “So for this and many other ways of support, I fully applaud Taiwan.”
However, the video shared with the post did not mention the boy’s story, but was a clip from a political commentary show hosted by Chen Feng-hsin (陳鳳馨) and Tang Hsiang-lung (唐湘龍).
The image for the video was a picture of Tsai next to the words “mask diplomacy fail.”
In the video, the two commentators criticize the DPP, accusing it of overindulging Taiwanese netizens, who they thought unfairly attacked Ho for a previous post she made on Facebook.
They also said the relationship between Taiwan and Singapore had become “hopeless.”
Ho on Thursday added a postscript to her post, saying that she did not agree with some parts of the video that were “clearly biased domestic political fights.”
She asked people to “please look past the cover photo for the video,” and apologized to Tsai.
“I owe the president of Taiwan a personal apology and hope to make amends in calmer times,” she wrote.
Despite apologizing, she did not take down the video.
On April 11, Ho stoked controversy when she shared an English-language news story about Taiwan donating masks to Singapore and captioned it “Errrr...”
The comment seemed to indicate that she was not keen on the plan.
A few days later, she updated the post, saying that she was grateful for Taiwan’s donation of masks.
She also said that “mistakes” had been forgiven, which has been widely interpreted as referring to Taiwan’s ban on mask exports, which has impacted mask supply to Singapore, as the city-state has two production lines in Taiwan.
Minister of Finance Su Jain-rong (蘇建榮) has said that before the ban took effect on Jan. 24, Singaporean mask manufacturer ST Engineering was given permission by the government to send N95 masks already packed for export to Singapore.
That batch of masks cleared customs on Jan. 29, before mask production equipment owned by the company was shipped back to Singapore on Feb. 12, Su said.
Eight restaurants in Taiwan yesterday secured a one-star rating from the Michelin Guide Taiwan for the first time, while three one-star restaurants from last year’s edition were promoted to two stars. Forty-three restaurants were awarded one star this year, including 34 in Taipei, five in Taichung and four in Kaohsiung. Hosu (好嶼), Chuan Ya (川雅), Sushi Kajin (鮨嘉仁), aMaze (心宴), La Vie by Thomas Buhner, Yuan Yi (元一) and Frassi in Taipei and Front House (方蒔) in Kaohsiung received a one-star rating for the first time. Hosu is known for innovative Taiwanese dishes, while Chuan Ya serves Sichuan cuisine and aMaze specializes
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. (THSRC) plans to ease strained capacity during peak hours by introducing new fare rules restricting passengers traveling without reserved seats in 2026, company Chairman Shih Che (史哲) said Wednesday. THSRC needs to tackle its capacity issue because there have been several occasions where passengers holding tickets with reserved seats did not make it onto their train in stations packed with individuals traveling without a reserved seat, Shih told reporters in a joint interview in Taipei. Non-reserved seats allow travelers maximum flexibility, but it has led to issues relating to quality of service and safety concerns, especially during
A magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck Chiayi County at 4:37pm today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 36.3km southeast of Chiayi County Hall at a depth of 10.4km, CWA data showed. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Chiayi County, Tainan and Kaohsiung on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Pingtung, Taitung, Hualien, Changhua, Nantou and Penghu counties, the data