US presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama started a European tour in Berlin yesterday, saying he aimed to give a fresh start to transatlantic ties, from the city where the Cold War was won.
Obama, who arrived from Israel, met first with German Chancellor Angela Merkel while a crowd of supporters cheered and snapped pictures outside.
The Illinois senator was also to see German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit before making a foreign policy speech in front of an expected crowd of tens of thousands.
The presumptive Democratic candidate said he wanted the US and Europe to rediscover their common ground.
“There is no doubt that part of what I want to communicate on both sides of the Atlantic is the enormous potential of us restoring a sense of coming together,” he told reporters traveling with him.
Obama defended himself against claims he is defying convention by electioneering abroad, saying he wanted to speak to the whole of Europe so he needed a big venue. He said it was Berlin’s symbolism that drew him here first.
Merkel brushed aside a flap over her objection to Obama’s initial wish to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, the iconic symbol of German unity.
Asked about the remarks, Merkel said she took the “perhaps a bit old-fashioned” view that the landmark should be reserved for sitting presidents.
Obama will instead speak in the Tiergarten park at the Victory Column, a 19th-century monument to celebrate the defeats of France, Austria and Denmark in successive wars and more recently, a venue for the wildly popular Love Parade techno parties.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
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
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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
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