President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has named National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) to be the Presidential Office secretary-general, the Presidential Office announced yesterday.
Council adviser Yen Teh-fa (嚴德發), a retired army general and former chief of the General Staff from 2015 to last year, was named as Wu’s successor as head of the council.
Wu and Yen are scheduled to assume their new posts next week, Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) said.
Photo: CNA
Wu is replacing Lin Bih-jaw (林碧炤), who resigned on Oct. 20 last year to focus on his writing.
Huang said Wu is an experienced hand at cross-strait affairs who has successfully led the council through the transition period and effectively navigated the international relations challenges that arose from the changing political situation in the region.
During the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Wu served as chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council and as the nation’s representative to Washington. He later served as Democratic Progressive Party secretary-general and the party’s representative to Washington, before being appointed to the council last year.
Photo: courtesy of the Military News Agency
Tsai has praised Wu’s professionalism and calm performance, Huang said.
Yen established a broad professional portfolio during his four decades of military service, with a successful track record in bolstering the military’s emergency response capabilities and raising the reputation of the armed forces, Huang said.
Yen was appointed to the council’s top post because his professional abilities would be relied upon to assist the government in devising national defense and homeland security policies, Huang said.
DAREDEVIL: Honnold said it had always been a dream of his to climb Taipei 101, while a Netflix producer said the skyscraper was ‘a real icon of this country’ US climber Alex Honnold yesterday took on Taiwan’s tallest building, becoming the first person to scale Taipei 101 without a rope, harness or safety net. Hundreds of spectators gathered at the base of the 101-story skyscraper to watch Honnold, 40, embark on his daredevil feat, which was also broadcast live on Netflix. Dressed in a red T-shirt and yellow custom-made climbing shoes, Honnold swiftly moved up the southeast face of the glass and steel building. At one point, he stepped onto a platform midway up to wave down at fans and onlookers who were taking photos. People watching from inside
A Vietnamese migrant worker yesterday won NT$12 million (US$379,627) on a Lunar New Year scratch card in Kaohsiung as part of Taiwan Lottery Co’s (台灣彩券) “NT$12 Million Grand Fortune” (1200萬大吉利) game. The man was the first top-prize winner of the new game launched on Jan. 6 to mark the Lunar New Year. Three Vietnamese migrant workers visited a Taiwan Lottery shop on Xinyue Street in Kaohsiung’s Gangshan District (崗山), a store representative said. The player bought multiple tickets and, after winning nothing, held the final lottery ticket in one hand and rubbed the store’s statue of the Maitreya Buddha’s belly with the other,
‘NATO-PLUS’: ‘Our strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific are facing increasing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party,’ US Representative Rob Wittman said The US House of Representatives on Monday released its version of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes US$1.15 billion to support security cooperation with Taiwan. The omnibus act, covering US$1.2 trillion of spending, allocates US$1 billion for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, as well as US$150 million for the replacement of defense articles and reimbursement of defense services provided to Taiwan. The fund allocations were based on the US National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026 that was passed by the US Congress last month and authorized up to US$1 billion to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency in support of the
HIGH-TECH DEAL: Chipmakers that expand in the US would be able to import up to 2.5 times their new capacity with no extra tariffs during an approved construction period Taiwan aims to build a “democratic” high-tech supply chain with the US and form a strategic artificial intelligence (AI) partnership under the new tariffs deal it sealed with Washington last week, Taipei’s top negotiator in the talks said yesterday. US President Donald Trump has pushed Taiwan, a major producer of semiconductors which runs a large trade surplus with the US, to invest more in the US, specifically in chips that power AI. Under the terms of the long-negotiated deal, chipmakers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) that expand US production would incur a lower tariff on semiconductors or related manufacturing
RSS