The vice president yesterday denied that there had ever been a falling-out between her and the president, saying she didn't believe he was responsible for the widely reported row.
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) said that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had never said she was taking advantage of others.
On Monday, Chen resumed a regular lunch meeting with Lu after canceling it the week before. Following the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) setback in the Dec. 3 local elections, the nation's top two leaders last week appeared to be using the Presidential Office's public relations system to deliver messages to each other, including rebukes.
It was rumored that Chen, referring to Lu after she took over as the party's acting chairperson, said that she had been "fully taking advantage of others."
Last Saturday, when Chen and Lu inspected a navy site, their failure to greet each other suggested that relations were icy.
Yesterday, however, Lu told the media that the atmosphere of her lunch with Chen was quite pleasant and "certain misunderstandings don't exist any more."
Lu said that she had been pondering where the rumor had come from and firmly believed that Chen would not have used such language.
"The president especially told me that he would have never said I was fully taking advantage of others or something like that," Lu said.
Lu said that during the lunch she forgot to mention the establishment of the Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit Construction Monitoring Alliance, but would immediately report to Chen about it.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS