MEDIA
Article features ‘rebel’ Tsai
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was featured in an article published by Paris-based weekly news magazine L’Express. The article is titled “Tsai Ing-wen, the rebel,” in its print version, while the title is “Taiwan: Tsai Ing-wen, the president who defies Beijing” in the online version. The article was part of a special summer series focusing on the most powerful and influential women in Asia. Beijing’s suppression of Taiwan’s international space seems to be successful, the article said, evidenced by the fact that since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the US and China in 1979, no US president had spoken to a Taiwanese head of state until last year. Shortly after US President Donald Trump’s election as US president in November last year, he stunned Beijing by taking a call from Tsai, who wanted to congratulate him, the article said. Most Taiwanese hope that Tsai will not cave in to pressure from Beijing, it added.
MILITARY
PLA bombers drill near ADIZ
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force on Thursday sent formations of Xian H-6 strategic bombers near Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) and the Miyako Strait south of Japan’s Okinawa Island as part of a long-range drill, the Ministry of National Defense said. The drill was part of a training session in the Western Pacific that also includes drills by a range of fighter aircraft, the ministry said. A group of H-6 bombers from the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command flew just outside the ADIZ, while another passed over the Bashi Channel and the Miyako Strait, a strategic entryway into the Western Pacific between the islands of Miyako and Okinawa, the ministry said, adding that it was closely following the movements.
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