Lebanon's first parliamentary polls without heavy-handed Syrian meddling began yesterday, and loyalty to the former premier whose assassination catalyzed the turmoil that drove Syrian forces out was displayed at the capital's ballot boxes.
The family of slain Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri -- widow Nazek, sons Fahd and Ayman and daughter Hind -- led the voting, arriving within an hour of the opening of polls at 7am.
"I have high hopes today that we will uncover the truth of who planned and carried out the crime against my beloved husband, who in life built this country and in his martyrdom achieved national unity," Nazek Hariri told reporters after casting her ballot at a Verdun polling station before she headed to downtown Beirut to pray at her slain husband's grave.
Many observers expect the polls to sweep the anti-Syrian opposition to power and install a new parliament, removing the last of Syria's political control. Syrian forces withdrew last month, ending a 29-year military dominance, after mass demonstrations in Lebanon and relentless international pressure sparked by the February assassination.
More than 100 foreign observers from the EU and the UN were watching the vote for irregularities, the first time Lebanon has permitted foreign scrutiny. The organization of French-speaking countries also sent a delegation.
It was also the first election where Syrian or Lebanese intelligence agents or their allies did not appear to be influencing voters.
"There is no pressure," said Mohieddine Badran, a 57-year-old barber who said he voted for the Hariri ticket because "they are clean guys" who would carry out the slain leader's program.
The spiritual leader of Sunni Muslims, the sect to which the Hariris belong, joined in calling for people to go out and vote.
"Today is the day of gratitude for the great martyr Rafik Hariri," said Mohammed Rashid Kabbani, the Grand Mufti of the Republic, after voting. "Indifference could negatively affect the outcome."
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
RSS