Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) yesterday departed for Japan on a one-week private visit, his sixth such trip in 14 years.
Lee said prior to his departure that he would use the opportunity to discuss with Japanese experts issues related to cancer treatment, solar photovoltaic energy and livestock breeding.
Accompanied by his wife, Tseng Wen-hui (曾文惠), and their two daughters, Anna Lee (李安娜) and Annie Lee (李安妮), the 91-year-old landed at Osaka airport.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
According to the Friends of Lee Teng-hui Association, which helped organize the trip, Lee will deliver a speech in Osaka today, before traveling to Tokyo on Sunday, where he is scheduled to give another speech and tour renewable energy facilities.
His last stop is in Hokkaido on Tuesday, where Lee is scheduled to visit livestock breeding and dairy businesses, the association said.
Lee, the nation’s first democratically elected president and an outspoken supporter of Taiwanese independence, last visited Japan in September 2009.
The current tour is Lee’s sixth visit to Japan since May 2000, when he retired after having been in office for 12 years.
The first Taiwan-born president, Lee spent 22 years under Japanese rule — from when he was born in 1923 until the period ended in 1945 — and has expressed affection for the nation’s former colonial ruler.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by