Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday clarified through the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation that he did not hit nor grab the neck of former foundation deputy chief executive officer Wang Kuang-tzu (王光慈).
The rebuttal came after local media reported that, during Ma’s attendance at the Straits Forum in Shanghai last year, he allegedly grabbed Wang by the neck after becoming dissatisfied with the calligraphy style on a nameplate, blaming her for the arrangement.
The foundation said that after being asked about the incident, Ma recalled expressing dissatisfaction with the typeface used on the nameplate and questioning Wang over the arrangements. However, he denied causing a scene at the venue or physically assaulting Wang by grabbing her neck, the foundation quoted him as saying.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The foundation said media reports further alleged that while traveling by bus to the airport, Ma lost his temper, berated Wang and “grabbed her by the neck,” reportedly frightening “all delegation members and students.”
The foundation rejected the allegation, saying that the student participants were traveling on a separate bus and were not with Ma at the time, and could not have known what occurred on his vehicle. It also denied claims that everyone in the delegation had been frightened, and that Ma’s office later imposed a gag order to shield him.
The statement came after Ma on Friday in a video address denied rumors that he has dementia. Ma expressed “shock and regret” over a statement issued by his wife, Chou Mei-ching (周美青), the day before his eldest sister, Ma Yi-nan (馬以南), was to manage his medical care and act as his spokesperson amid an ongoing embezzlement investigation into his foundation.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
Carrefour Taiwan is to begin using a new name from the start of July, but it cannot divulge the name until then, the chairman of the supermarket chain's parent company said today. President Chain Store Co chairman Lo Chih-hsien (羅智先) was asked by reporters after a shareholders' meeting to confirm whether the company has settled on a new name for the supermarket brand. In March, the government-registered name of two Carrefour Taiwan branches was quietly changed to "Le Chia Kang" (樂家康) in Chinese, raising speculation that has been selected as the name. Lo said that because of local regulations and contractual obligations, the
RSS