A total of 183 distinguished guests attended the official Double Ten National Day celebration yesterday, 92 of whom were from foreign delegations and 91 were foreign representatives in Taiwan, including their spouses, data from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as of Tuesday showed.
The delegates included 24 people from the Asia-Pacific region, 22 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 12 from North America and 12 from Europe, as well as 20 foreign journalists and two people from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, the ministry said on Wednesday.
Six of the nation’s allies sent delegations to the event: 10 people led by Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feleti Teo and his wife; four led by Belizean Deputy Prime Minister Cordel Hyde; three by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Deputy Prime Minister Montgomery Daniel; four by Saint Lucian Senate President Alvina Reynolds and House of Assembly Speaker Claudius Francis; four by Guatemalan first lady Lucrecia Peinado; and eight by Palauan Minister of State Gustav Aitaro.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Other Taiwan-friendly countries also sent delegates, including US Representative Debbie Lesko, Japanese Councilor Akiko Santo and We Are Peru Party Chairman Patricia Li Sotelo, the ministry said, thanking all guests for extending their friendship to Taiwan.
International media covering the event focused on President William Lai’s (賴清德) statement that “the People’s Republic of China has no right to represent Taiwan.”
The Washington Post added that Lai’s speech “included offers to work together with China,” and cited National Taiwan University political science professor Lev Nachman as saying it was not as “snarky” as it used to be.
Reuters reported that Lai’s address was delivered in “both a firm and a conciliatory tone,” while the Financial Times titled its coverage “Taiwan’s president calls on China to ‘live up to’ duty to protect peace.”
The BBC, Japan Times and al-Jazeera highlighted his pledge to “resist annexation” in their headlines.
“Lai has been more outspoken than his predecessor, [former president] Tsai Ing-wen [蔡英文], in defending Taiwan’s sovereignty,” the Japan Times reported.
Lai’s vow to uphold Taiwan’s sovereignty marked “his most high-profile public address since taking office earlier this year,” the BBC reported.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
RSS