A navy helicopter pilot who was struck on the head by a spinning rotor blade earlier this month is in stable condition following brain surgery at a hospital in southern Taiwan, the Naval Fleet Command said yesterday.
The lieutenant commander pilot, surnamed Wei (魏), is conscious and has stable vital signs, the navy said.
Wei underwent brain surgery on Dec. 2 at the Zuoying Branch of the Kaohsiung Armed Forces General Hospital, where he was rushed after the incident involving a marine patrol helicopter at a naval base in Greater Kaohsiung.
He has been transferred to a regular ward at the hospital and his life is not in danger, the navy said.
On the day of the incident, Wei was preparing to take off on a training mission in a McDonnell Douglas 500MD/ASW Defender helicopter when a warning signal for an engine problem appeared.
He left the cockpit and went to the back of the helicopter to assist the technical staff, officials said at the time, adding that he apparently got too close to the spinning rotor blades and was struck on his head.
According to the navy’s preliminary findings in its ongoing investigation, Wei did not observe standard operating procedures when he went to assist the technical crew.
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