Vice Minister of National Defense Lin Chong-pin (林中斌) left Wash-ington for home on Sunday after wrapping up a visit to the US capital.
Unlike a similar visit six months ago, Lin did not meet with US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz because he was on vacation in California.
A US official denied that bilateral military exchanges have been hindered by disputes over Taiwan's plan to hold a "defensive referendum" on the day of the presidential election on March 20. The referendum seeks to give the people of Taiwan a venue to voice their opposition to the deployment by China of nearly 500 ballistic missiles targeting locations in Taiwan.
The official cited the convening of a seminar on the Taiwan Strait situation in Hawaii on Dec. 15 to back his claim that Taiwan-US military exchanges have not been affected by the referendum dispute.
Previous media reports said the US had canceled the seminar to express its displeasure at Taiwan's referendum plan. Some reports mistakenly described the seminar as a Taiwan-US joint computer war simulation and alleged that Lin had been barred from attending because of the referendum issue.
All those reports were untrue, the US official said, adding that the seminar was held as originally scheduled and that Lin was not supposed to take part in the seminar from the very beginning.
An American China hand said Taiwan-US military exchanges are not expected to be adversely affected by political relations between the two countries at least for the time being. It is not easy to suddenly put the brakes on the increasingly closer Taiwan-US military cooperation, the expert noted.
Some US officials in charge of relevant affairs said bilateral military cooperation not only benefits Taiwan's national defense but also US interests.
However, some other US aca-demics pointed out that military cooperation could be the first target if the Bush administration intends to cool relations with Taiwan.
During his visit, Lin headed a delegation of military officials to attend a meeting on military exchanges. Lin briefed US officials on national defense reforms, military restructuring and progress in its arms procurement plans.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching