Security around Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) remains unchanged, a military official said yesterday in response to lawmakers’ concerns about a military challenge in light of the recent anti-China riots in Vietnam.
There have been online rumors in Vietnam, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Huang-Liang (蔡煌瑯) said, that Hanoi may fire toward Taiping Island — or even try to take it over with military force — to ease Vietnamese unrest, which erupted last week after China deployed an oil rig near the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) — claimed by Taipei, Beijing and Hanoi.
Tsai spoke at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee yesterday.
Deputy Minister of National Defense Andrew Hsia (夏立言) responded that the ministry had not received information about the possibility of such an attack.
He said the island was stationed by and ably protected by the Coast Guard Administration.
Military troops could reach the island in four hours using C-130 transport vehicles, Hsia said, adding that in good weather, Cheng-kung class frigates could arrive 36 hours.
Meanwhile, the government yesterday launched computerized war games, which featured its newly acquired AH-64 Apache helicopters defending a simulated attack by a Chinese aircraft carrier group.
The five-day drill, part of the nation’s biggest annual military maneuvers scheduled for September, is aimed at testing the military’s defense capability against China’s fast-expanding military, defense officials said, without providing details.
One scenario simulated attacks by a Chinese aircraft carrier group on the east coast, according to Chinese-language Apple Daily.
With defense focused on the west coast facing China, the east is relatively vulnerable to any Chinese invasion, analysts say.
The drill features for the first time weaponry acquired last year, including the latest variant of US-made Apaches, which military gurus say is the world’s most-lethal attack helicopter; P-3C submarine hunting aircraft; and an upgraded version of the nation’s Indigenous Defense Fighter, the Apple Daily 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