Taiwan President Thanks Fighter Pilots as Chinese Drills Ebb

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a meeting with Canadian Liberal MP John McKay, the chairman of the House of Commons standing committee on national defense, who is leading a Canadian parliamentary delegation for a visit, at the presidential office in Taipei, Taiwan in this handout image released April 12, 2023. Taiwan Presidential Office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a meeting with Canadian Liberal MP John McKay, the chairman of the House of Commons standing committee on national defense, who is leading a Canadian parliamentary delegation for a visit, at the presidential office in Taipei, Taiwan in this handout image released April 12, 2023. Taiwan Presidential Office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
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Taiwan President Thanks Fighter Pilots as Chinese Drills Ebb

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a meeting with Canadian Liberal MP John McKay, the chairman of the House of Commons standing committee on national defense, who is leading a Canadian parliamentary delegation for a visit, at the presidential office in Taipei, Taiwan in this handout image released April 12, 2023. Taiwan Presidential Office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a meeting with Canadian Liberal MP John McKay, the chairman of the House of Commons standing committee on national defense, who is leading a Canadian parliamentary delegation for a visit, at the presidential office in Taipei, Taiwan in this handout image released April 12, 2023. Taiwan Presidential Office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday thanked fighter pilots who scrambled against China's air force during its drills around the island and pledged to keep strengthening the armed forces, as Beijing's military activities around the island ebbed.

China began the exercises, including simulated precision strikes with bombers and missile forces, on April 8 after Tsai returned from Los Angeles, where she met US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, infuriating Beijing, Reuters said.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, a claim the government in Taipei strongly rejects, and routinely denounces high-level meetings between Taiwanese and foreign leaders and officials.

In the central Taiwanese city of Taichung, Tsai met fighter pilots in who are often stationed at the front-line air base of Magong in the Taiwan Strait, thanking them for their hard work and for sticking to their posts around the clock.

"I want to tell everyone: as long as we are united, we can reassure the country's people and let the world see our determination to protect the nation," she said in a video clip provided by the presidential office.

Tsai noted that the Taiwan-made Ching-kuo Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF), which entered service in 1997, had been upgraded to more advanced versions.
"In the future, we will continue to upgrade software and hardware facilities and strengthen personnel training," she said.

Tsai's office showed images of her talking to pilots dressed in flight uniforms and being given a briefing in front of an IDF parked in a hangar.

China's three days of drills formally ended on Monday, but Taiwan has reported continued activity on a reduced scale.

On Friday morning, Taiwan's defense ministry said it had not spotted any Chinese military aircraft crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait in the past 24 hours.

In its regular morning report on Chinese military activities in the previous 24-hour period, Taiwan's defense ministry said it had seen four Chinese military aircraft and eight Chinese warships around Taiwan.

But in an accompanying map of China's activities it did not show any Chinese warplanes crossing the Taiwan Strait's median line, an unofficial boundary between the two.

China says it does not recognize the median line and has since August, when it staged war games after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, flown fighter jets regularly across it.

The ministry's map showed a single Chinese Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft flying between Taiwan's southwest coast and the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands at the top of the South China Sea.

Taiwan's government says that although it wants peace and to hold talks with China, it will not bow to pressure, and that Taiwan has a right to engage with the world.

A poll published on Friday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which bills itself as non-partisan, found that 61% of respondents approved of the Tsai-McCarthy meeting.



Hundreds of Journalists in France Stage ‘Die-in’ Solidarity Rally for Colleagues Killed in Gaza

More than 200 journalists lay down on the steps of the Opéra Bastille in a symbolic “die-in” as the names of the reporters killed in Gaza were read out (AFP) 
More than 200 journalists lay down on the steps of the Opéra Bastille in a symbolic “die-in” as the names of the reporters killed in Gaza were read out (AFP) 
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Hundreds of Journalists in France Stage ‘Die-in’ Solidarity Rally for Colleagues Killed in Gaza

More than 200 journalists lay down on the steps of the Opéra Bastille in a symbolic “die-in” as the names of the reporters killed in Gaza were read out (AFP) 
More than 200 journalists lay down on the steps of the Opéra Bastille in a symbolic “die-in” as the names of the reporters killed in Gaza were read out (AFP) 

Hundreds of journalists joined demonstrations in Paris and Marseille (southern France) on Wednesday in a show of solidarity for their colleagues killed in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, AFP correspondents said.

In Paris, more than 200 journalists, including prominent members of the French press, lay down on the steps of the Opéra Bastille in a symbolic “die-in” as the names of the reporters killed in Gaza were read out.

Nearly 200 journalists were killed in the Palestinian enclave since October 2023.

“Gaza of faces, not just numbers”, read posters bearing photographs of their fallen Palestinian colleagues.

At the demonstration, placards bearing the logos of journalist trade unions stood alongside numerous Palestinian flags and keffiyehs. Some participants also chanted, “We will not be silent,” and “Free Palestine.”

Head of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate Europe branch, Yousef Habash, made a stand against “genocide” in Gaza, demanding an end to the blockade imposed on the Strip.

Head of France’s journalist union SNJ-CGT, Pablo Aiquel, said, “We have never witnessed such a high number of victims in our profession.”

He said the right to information is under threat.

Reporters Without Borders Director General Thibaut Bruttin said “This gathering comes late, perhaps too late. (...) I've never seen a conflict during which a killed journalist is described as a terrorist.”

In Marseille, about 160 people attended a similar demonstration. The names of journalists killed in Gaza were read out, before the participants held a minute's silence to mourn the victims.

In an op-ed in the leading French daily Le Monde earlier this week, several journalist associations, trade unions and around 40 media organizations, condemned the Israeli media blackout in Gaza.

“The Israeli army is imposing a media blackout on Gaza to silence, as much as possible, the witnesses of the war crimes committed by its troops,” said the newspaper column.