Minister of National Defense Lee Jye (
The vehicles would be of great value in the country's defense, Lee said.
"The SDVs are capable of damaging China's vehicles. If China's ships attempt to gather in harbors before launching a military attack on Taiwan, the SDVs could sneak up to the harbors and attach mines on the Chinese ships," Lee told the legislature's National Defense Committee yesterday.
Lee said that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators were mistaken in their claim that the government had proposed to buy the vehicles from the UAE in exchange for allowing President Chen Shui-bian (
Actually, Lee said, the ministry had proposed the procurement of SDVs from the UAE at the beginning of last year.
"It is an offensive weapon which this country has found difficult to procure internationally, so we considered buying it from the UAE," he said.
He said that the SDVs were also being used by the US Navy's SEAL special forces.
"The budget proposal for their procurement will be tabled at the next legislative session in the fall," Lee said.
He said that he was not confident that the SDV proposal would gain the legislature's support, in light of the controversy surrounding the proposed purchase of three advanced weapons systems from the US.
KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (
He said that National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Parris Chang (
"The defense ministry should not listen to the National Security Council and should propose arms procurements which are really necessary for defense," Lin said.
KMT Legislator Su Chi (
Safa is an international arms broker who has been on France's wanted list since 2004 over his alleged involvement in a French arms-sale scandal, Su said.
Speaking at a press conference in Taipei yesterday, Su displayed a photo of Safa sitting with other Libyan guests in the Presidential Office.
This proved his close relations with Taiwan and Libya, Su said.
Lee said he had no idea what Su was talking about.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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