■ Society
A-mei's microphone found
EVA Airways has found a treasured microphone belonging to pop diva Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹) after a month-long search of airports in the Asia-Pacific region, an airline official said yesterday. Chang, also known as A-mei, lost the microphone after flying home on EVA Airways from a concert she gave in Singapore on July 24. A-mei is so attached to the microphone she even has a nickname for it -- "Little White." The mike was found at the airport in Melbourne, Australia, an EVA official said. It had mistakenly been sent to Melbourne on Emirates Airline, he said. After learning the microphone had been located, A-mei "gave out several screams" of joy at a music festival on Sunday in Taitung County, a Chinese-language newspaper reported. She said she could now take "Little White" to a charity concert hosted by film star Jackie Chan (成龍) in Shanghai on Friday where she is scheduled to perform, the report said.
PHOTO: HUANG PO-JUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
■ Defense
Ministry denies plane report
Ministry of National Defense spokesman Liu Chih-chien (劉志堅) yesterday rebutted a Chinese-language newspaper report which said Taiwan sent a spy plane to a US military base on Okinawa last week to monitor the recent Chinese-Russian military exercises. The plane reportedly monitored the drills from the Yellow Sea and was able to intercept the electronic communications, the newspaper reported. The report said it was "the first time a Taiwanese warplane has landed on Japanese soil and on a US military base in Okinawa since the US cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan to recognize China in 1979." Liu said that the "report was not true." The Sino-Russian exercises were held from Aug. 14 to Aug. 22 in and around China's Shandong Peninsula.
■ Defense
Coast guard boat rammed
A patrol boat was damaged early on Sunday morning after it was rammed by a Chinese fishing vessel which was being pursued on suspicion of illegal fishing, the Coast Guard Administra-tion said yesterday. The Min Chin Yu 0233 was spotted fishing early in the morning off Kinmen, a coast guard spokesman said. The patrol boat ordered the crew of the Chinese vessel to stop for an inspection but the order was ignored. "The fishing boat sped up and turned left all of a sudden and rammed into our patrol boat which was slowing down for a boarding check," the spokesman said. The 35-tonne patrol boat was dented but no one was injured. The Coast Guard Administration will seek compensation from the owner of the Chinese fishing boat, the spokesman said.
■ Weather
Typhoon Talim approaches
The approach of Typhoon Talim will have an impact on the nation's weather over the next few days and a sea warning might be issued today, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Forecasters said Talim, the 13th typhoon reported in the Pacific this year, is now to the east of Hualien County, moving in a west-northwest direction. Talim is expected to affect Taiwan if it continues gaining strength and moving in the same direction, they said. There is a chance it will lose strength and shift direction, thus reducing the risk of landfall in Taiwan.
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
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
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