INDUSTRY
Another fire at refinery
A fire broke out yesterday at an oil refinery run by Formosa Plastics Group at its petrochemical complex in Mailiao (麥寮), Yunlin County, firefighters said. The refinery, run by the group’s subsidiary Formosa Petrochemical Corp, reported the fire at 4:20am and it was put out immediately, firefighters said. No casualties were reported. The cause of the fire has yet to be determined, but firefighters suggested the fire began during a test run of the plant’s equipment. The local government shut down the refinery after a fire in the facility in July 2010. It has been closed since then and tests were being run to determine when it could resume operations. Formosa Petrochemical president Tsao Mihn (曹明) said the refinery suffered no major damage and trial runs would resume in one or two weeks after a complete inspection.
DEFENSE
Alleged spies charged
Two retired Taiwanese in their 60s have been indicted on charges of collecting information for China, prosecutors said yesterday, in the latest in a string of espionage cases. Tsai Kuo-bin (蔡國賓), a former official at the National Security Bureau, was charged with spying for China over a period of several years, the Banciao District Prosecutors’ Office said. Tsai, 65, went to China several times between 2007 and 2010 to hand over information on Taiwan’s intelligence units and politics, and was paid about NT$620,000 in total, according to prosecutors. He recruited another ex-secret agent, Wang Wei-ya (王維亞), 63, to try to acquire a banned book containing sensitive information on Taiwanese intelligence, the prosecutors’ office said.
CRIME
Taiwanese dies in shooting
An Australian-born Taiwanese who was shot at a Brisbane shopping center on Wednesday last week has died, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Jack Lee was rushed to a local hospital shortly after being “shot at a close distance by an anonymous person,” Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Deputy Director-General James Chou (周穎華) said. Lee, who was reported to be in his early 20s, held dual citizenship in Taiwan and Australia. Because of Lee’s Taiwanese status, local police visited the ministry’s office in Brisbane on Friday last week to “exchange information,” Chou said, adding that the ministry would work closely with the Brisbane police in the investigation.
TOURISM
Tourist falls to his death
A Chinese man who fell into the sea while touring a scenic rock park along the northern coast on Monday died from his injuries after doctors failed to resuscitate him at a nearby hospital. According to police, the man, a 47-year-old Chinese national surnamed Jin (金), slipped and fell into the sea while taking pictures in a restricted area along the shore of the Yehliu Geopark. A patrol guard, who was posted a distance away, saw Jin ignoring a red warning line and entering the restricted area. He blew his whistle to warn the man, but to no avail, police said. A witness surnamed Lee (李) said he saw the tourist walking along the shore taking pictures, when the man slipped and disappeared from sight. Jin, who suffered several wounds to the head, was rescued and rushed to National Taiwan University Hospital’s Jinshan branch, police said. Doctors at the hospital tried to resuscitate him for 50 minutes, but were unsuccessful.
Agencies, with Staff writer
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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