The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday criticized a local media report that compared former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s visit to Taiwan to “a political protection racket.”
The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday said that Pompeo had financial reasons for visiting the nation, alleging potential financial gain from retirement benefits, investments and business travel expenses linked to Anarock Global Partners.
The ministry in a statement called the story “malicious speculation made with the aim of shifting public focus from the true meaning of the visit and disparaging a true friend of Taiwan.”
Photo: CNA
Pompeo’s contributions to the development of Taiwan-US ties during his tenure as US secretary of state is a matter of public record and the two nations’ friendship has been deepened thanks to his visit, the ministry said.
The delegation did not include any member of the company referred to in the report and no private investment was discussed during the visit, it said.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) also condemned the report.
“It is not proper to spread mean-spirited rumors about a guest,” Su said.
Pompeo arrived in Taipei on Wednesday evening for a four-day stay, his first to Taiwan.
Additional reporting by Wu Su-wei
This story has been corrected since it was first published.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,