National security authorities yesterday pledged to conduct a stringent investigation into a security breach at Chunghwa Telecom Co, the nation’s largest telecommunications company, after it was confirmed that a Chinese citizen gained access to an off-limits machine room.
News of the unauthorized visit was first reported by Chinese-language Next Magazine, which said a Chinese national posted dozens of photographs of machines and equipment from inside the Chunghwa Telecom facility to social media site WeChat.
The man was identified as Wu Xin (吳昕), a native of China’s Fujian Province, by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) at a press conference yesterday.
According to Next Magazine, Wu claimed the photographs were from a “top-secret agency” in Taiwan and he was the first Chinese visitor to see the “important” facility.
Chunghwa Telecom vice president Ho Hsu-hui confirmed the incident, which he said happened on Oct. 23, adding that it had not come to the company’s attention until Nov. 6, when the company called an emergency meeting.
An internal probe found that a senior staff member met Wu when traveling in China, and the employee invited Wu to come to Taiwan, said Ho, adding that since the staff member was still at work when Wu arrived, he invited his guest into the machine room.
According to Ho, the machine room Wu “toured” serves both commercial and residential areas, including several governmental units such as Taipei’s Traffic Adjudication Office, the Ministry of Economic Affair’s Small and Medium Enterprises Administration and the national power and water companies.
“No important national intelligence facilities are situated in those areas,” the company executive said, adding that Chunghwa Telecom, a formerly state-run enterprise in which the government still holds shares, has 900 machine rooms around Taiwan, “all under strict security control.”
Calling it an isolated incident, Ho said the company found no signs of intelligence leaks or sabotaged equipment, and the staff member responsible has been transferred and given a major demerit.
National Security Bureau division director Chao Chia-feng (趙家鋒) said measures have been taken to determine whether the purpose of Wu’s visit matched that stated on his application to come to Taiwan, adding that if he is found to have collected intelligence, he will face punishment under the Criminal Code and the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法).
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:
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
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