The Presidential Office yesterday dismissed speculation that the country’s diplomatic ties with Honduras were shaky as President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) prepares to visit the country one day later than scheduled.
Saying that arrangements for Ma’s visit were still being made, Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) added that Ma would likely stay in Panama for one more day because Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya may still be out of the country the day Ma had originally planned to arrive, despite Zelaya’s pledge that he would have returned by then.
“To avoid any misunderstandings, we decided to stay in Panama for one more day,” Wang said, dismissing speculation that the decision stemmed from unfriendly moves by Tegucigalpa toward Taiwan.
Wang said Taiwan’s relationship with its ally was sound and that both sides had fully cooperated during negotiations.
It has been widely reported that Tegucigalpa is unhappy with Ma’s foreign aid policy. Some local media have speculated that Ma had planned to visit Honduras during his last state visit to Central America earlier this month, but decided to postpone it.
When Ma met Zelaya earlier this month in El Salvador, Ma said he would stop providing more funding to Honduras for the construction of a hydraulic power plant and instead offer technical support while letting the Honduran government raise the remainder of the money on its own.
Ma will make state visits to three Central American countries later this month. The main purpose of the trip is to attend the inauguration of Panamanian president-elect Ricardo Martinelli on Wednesday.
The 169-person delegation will depart on Monday and return on July 8, with transfer stops in San Francisco on the way there and in Honolulu on the way back. The trip will also take Ma to Nicaragua and Honduras.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its