Following a helicopter crash during a rescue mission late last month, the Executive Yuan is to finance a plan to install equipment for night flying on six of the 15 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters designated for rescue purposes, Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) said yesterday.
Lee told a press conference following a Cabinet meeting that Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) has agreed to earmark NT$3 billion (US$102 million) to purchase the equipment as the National Airborne Service Corps (NASC) proceeds with a plan to acquire 15 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters from the Ministry of National Defense.
The defense ministry plans to procure 60 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the US between 2014 and 2019, and to provide the NASC with 15 UH-60s to replace its aging fleet of UH-1H rescue helicopters and Alouette B234 rescue helicopters.
However, questions have emerged regarding the lack of night-flying equipment on the procurement list.
A Sikorsky S-70C-6 rescue helicopter was sent out on March 26 to airlift a crew member from a fishing boat off the southeastern coast, but the chopper crashed into the sea off Lanyu (蘭嶼), also known as Orchid Island, leaving one serviceman injured and five missing. The S-70 is a civilian version of the Black Hawk.
The incident was the latest in a series of tragedies over the past few years that have raised concerns about the overuse of S-70C helicopters, the only choppers in the country capable of conducting sea rescue missions at night.
Critics have said that replacing UH-1Hs and B234 rescue helicopters with UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters without night-flying equipment would be of little help.
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:
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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