DEFENSE
Chopper has heavy landing
An AH-1W SuperCobra helicopter “landed heavily” yesterday morning at an army base, causing minor damage to the aircraft. The two pilots were not injured in the incident, the army said yesterday. The army said the helicopter took off at 9:10am from an army base in Sinshe (新社), Greater Taichung. While practicing rotations at 10:30am, the helicopter descended quickly before landing heavily at the base, damaging the helicopter’s tail and machine-gun batteries. Pilot Chu Po-hsun (朱寶勳) and instructor Liu Ming-hui (劉銘輝) were not injured. The pair are both experienced pilots, the army said, adding that they might have misjudged speed and height during the rotation practice. The army said it had temporarily suspended training flights with the helicopter.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Cohen backs closer ties
New York University School of Law professor Jerome Cohen said in Taipei yesterday that everyone concerned should support closer cross-strait ties and that human rights protection in China was a crucial issue that would impact that country’s future development. US-Asia Law Institute co-director Cohen made the remarks during a meeting with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) at the Presidential Office. Ma said Cohen, who was one of his professors at Harvard Law School in the late 1970s, was a leading authority in the US on legal issues in China and had also been closely following judicial reforms in Taiwan. Ma said the presidential debate in Taiwan on Dec. 3 was followed closely for the first time by Chinese netizens and microbloggers. Cohen, who is particularly interested in criminal law procedures and human rights, is an expert on judicial systems on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the president said.
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