■ Fishing
One missing after boat sinks
Five crew members of a Keelung fishing boat have been rescued, but one other remains unaccounted for after the boat sank off the Pengchiayu islet Wednesday night, the national rescue center said yesterday. The Keelung-based Fusheng No. 266 fishing boat caught fire Wednesday when it was operating in waters some 110km north of Pengchiayu, a small islet northeast of Keelung in northern Taiwan. Five of the six crew members were rescued by other Taiwanese fishing boats operating in the region. The rescued men included the Taiwanese skipper of the vessel as well as two Taiwanese and two Vietnamese workers. The national rescue center sent helicopters to airlift the rescued crewmen to Taipei hospitals for medical treatment. Because they all sustained injuries in the boat fire, their conditions remain serious, according to hospital sources. The missing crew member was a Chinese fishery worker whose identity has yet to be determined, the rescue center said.
■ Defense
Taiwan taken off blacklist
Taiwan is set to buy a range of tanks from Germany after Berlin removed Taipei from an arms exports blacklist, it was reported yesterday. The odds of Taiwan buying 55-tonne Leopard 2 tanks made by Germany's Krauss-Maffei Wegmann have shortened after "the German government quietly removed Taiwan from its list of bans on arms export," a local Chinese-language newspaper said. The paper said Germany's ruling Social Democrat party and its economic ministry were in favor of the export of such military technology as Leopard 2 tanks to Taiwan, although the Green Party -- the minority party in the governing coalition -- opposes it. The Taiwan army earlier this year offered to buy M-A2 tanks from the US, but critics said that Taiwan's terrain would be difficult for the 70-tonne M-A2s to handle.
■ Cross-strait ties
China accused of spying
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday accused China of bugging the phones of Taiwan's overseas offices to thwart its efforts to win diplomatic recognition, CNA reported. The agency quoted Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien (簡又新) as saying the problem was so serious that anti-bugging efforts will be reinforced. The agency also quoted unidentified officials as saying China had intercepted information that nearly helped it foil several of Taiwan's secret diplomatic offensives. The officials said they suspect China learned about Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮) plan to visit Indonesia unannounced in August and tried unsuccessfully to get Jakarta to cancel her visa. Lu met several Indonesian officials during her trip, drawing diplomatic protests from China. Jakarta later stated it had not invited Lu and had no plans to open diplomatic links with Taiwan.
■ Foreign affairs
Vice minister sworn in
Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien (簡又新) chaired a swearing-in ceremony yesterday for new Vice Minister Tu Chou-seng (杜筑生), as well as for three Taiwan representatives to foreign countries and a new department chief. Tu, a veteran career diplomat familiar with French-speaking cultures in Africa, Europe and America, served as the Taiwan ambassador to Senegal for six years and five months. Chiou Jong-nan (邱榮男) and Wu Wen-ya (吳文雅) assumed the post of Taiwan representative to France and Malaysia, respectively.
Agencies
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater