President William Lai (賴清德) today attended an inauguration ceremony for the navy’s new training facility for its Underwater Operations Unit, called the Mercury Camp.
The president, accompanied by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄), National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and navy Commander Admiral Tang Hua (唐華), presided over the camp’s opening in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying (左營).
In his speech, Lai said the base represents important progress and shared his positive impressions of the new facilities.
Photo: Lee Hui-chou, Taipei Times
Each renovation of an aging facility is an important achievement for national defense reform and stands as a symbol of the military’s continuous improvement in living standards, Lai said.
He was confident that the comfortable environment would provide better living and training conditions for service members, allowing them to focus on their training.
The unit’s responsibilities, such as naval rescue missions, clearing underwater obstacles and removing explosives, require advanced skills and specialized training, which these new facilities would facilitate, Lai said.
The camp has the deepest training pool in Taiwan’s public sector as part of its new diving trainer center and features an adjustable floor and viewing windows to help instructors observe students.
Lai said he was particularly thankful for the unit’s work in saving civilians during rescue missions in recent typhoons, as well as removing obstacles to restore a fishing port to normal operations.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS