■Phenomena
Chiayi woman spots UFO
A white, oval unidentified flying object described as being the size of a basketball was sighted and videotaped by a Chiayi woman on Sunday. A "UFO specialist" did not rule out that it could have been an object from outer space. The woman, surnamed Wang, reported that her child was playing in the yard Sunday evening when she saw the object moving in a bamboo copse in front of the house. Alerted by the child's shout, Wang saw the object moving noiselessly and immediately videotaped the scene. The woman reported that the object was tinged with green around the edges. It moved up and down, right and left for nearly 20 minutes before flying rapidly southward and out of sight.
■ Security
Man attempts attack
Presidential Office spokesman James Huang (黃志芳) warned the public yesterday not the to challenge the office's security by breaking the law. The comments came after a 33-year old man was arrested yesterday for an attempted attack on the Presidential Office. Huang said Chiang Kao-yuan (江高原) was pouring gasoline along the sidewalk in front of the Presidential Office and was arrested by security guards before he was able to ignite the gasoline. After interrogation, Chiang was suspected of being mentally ill. According to Huang, Chiang told police that he had written an e-mail to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) asking for help. Chiang said in the e-mail that the government had inserted a chip in his brain when he was born, causing him to suffer both mentally and physically.
■ Diplomacy
Moscow office turns 10
Taiwan's representative office in Moscow celebrated its 10th anniversary on Sunday. Representative Chen Rong-jye (陳榮傑) said at a reception to mark the event that the economic and cultural exchanges between Russia and Taiwan have increased substantially since the office opened. He thanked friends in Russia for helping to make this improvement possible.
■ Health
Official urges vigilance
With more people going abroad during the summer, a public health official called yesterday for vigilance against outbreaks of dengue fever -- a mosquito-transmitted disease. Lin Ting (林鼎), a division chief with the Center for Disease Control, said Thailand, India, Hong Kong, Australia and Cambodia have all reported dengue fever outbreaks in recent months. "Local people should remain alert when traveling in those countries to avoid contracting the disease and possibly triggering an outbreak in Taiwan," Lin said.
■ Cross-strait ties
HK bill a blow to unification
The Cabinet said yesterday the controversy over an anti-subversion bill in Hong Kong has dashed hopes the nation might reunite with China on Beijing's terms. "We have never harbored any illusions about `one country, two systems,'" Cabinet spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said, referring to the formula China adopted to govern Hong Kong by promising the former British colony a high degree of autonomy. "The recent development in Hong Kong shows the entire world `one country, two systems' doesn't work in Hong Kong and won't work in Taiwan. It's a total failure."
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