The Ministry of National Defense declined yesterday to comment on a report that the US plans to create a Northeast Asian command to cope with possible military conflicts in the region.
"We have not received any information about the reported proposal and it is our established policy to refrain from commenting on any US military action," spokesman Major General Huang Suey-sheng said.
Huang was responding to a front page report in South Korea's Culture Daily on Monday saying that the US is mulling the feasibility of separating certain departments from its Pacific Command and integrating them into a new independent Northeast Asian command to handle possible military disputes on the Korean Peninsula, in the Taiwan Strait and in Japan.
Meanwhile, Huang said the ministry will join forces with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to hold a workshop today for journalists who may travel to the Middle East in the near future.
With a war against Iraq looming large, several local media organizations are planning to send reporters to the Persian Gulf area.
"The workshop is designed to help reporters learn more expertise and skills to protect themselves while covering news events in the Middle East," Huang said.
The course will include an introduction to US and Iraqi military arsenals as well as modern chemical weapons, biological warfare agents, protective measures, first-aid and anti-nuclear warfare equipment and measures, Huang said.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
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An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Taiwan was listed in 14th place among the world's wealthiest country in terms of GDP per capita, in the latest rankings released on Monday by Forbes magazine. Taiwan's GDP per capita was US$76,860, which put it at No. 14 on the list of the World's 100 Richest Countries this year, one spot above Hong Kong with US$75,130. The magazine's list of the richest countries in the world is compiled based on GDP per capita data, as estimated by the IMF. However, for a more precise measure of a nation's wealth, the magazine also considers purchasing power parity, which is a metric used to
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