President Chen Shui-bian (
"Every Taiwanese person has the obligation and right to express his or her voice at the crucial moment -- the presidential election and Taiwan's first ever referendum -- and we must let the international community understand our stance: Taiwan does not want missiles, we want to say `No' to China," Lee said during a rally last night in Taichuang County.
`ridiculous'
"While we advocate opposing China's missiles and military threats, they [the pan-blue camp] just advocate opposing the referendum," Lee said.
Lee also said the most ridiculous part of the campaign is that the heads of the "black gold" faction, the Chinese Nationalist Party's [KMT] Chairman Lien Chan (
"Can you believe it?" Lee said.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) held huge campaign rallies last night in central Taiwan, including Taichung and Changhua counties.
Lee and Chen joined together to urge voters to make the referendum a success and re-elect Chen, bringing the rally to a climax.
Many DPP grassroots politicians reminded the public that since Chen took power in 2000, his government has made extraordinary achievements in improving the infrastructure of the greater Taichung area, something which the former KMT government failed to achieve during its decades in power.
Urging voters not to be affected by fugitive tycoon Chen Yu-hao's (
"Chen Yu-hao has become the pan-blue camp's top weapon. It is unbelievable that the KMT uses this fugitive, who left hundreds of millions of dallars of debt in Taiwan and stole money to invest in China, as its campaign manager," said DPP Legislator Lin Feng-his (
COUNTERATTACK
"We must appeal to Taiwanese people that Taiwan's democracy must win, now the country can never allow the return of `black gold,'" President Chen said last night.
He stressed that Chen Yu-hao's accusations against his family were just a counterattack by "black gold" culprits who expect a KMT victory to help them escape punishments.
"This is the cost that we pay to eradicate black gold," Chen said.
Earlier yesterday, Chen lead a motorcade rally through Pingtung County. Standing in the back of a jeep, Chen was greeted by enthusiastic supporters who waved green flags and placards along the roads and received the hails of "A-Bian, get elected."
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide