WEATHER
Storm forms in Pacific
A tropical depression developed yesterday afternoon in the waters off the Philippines, the ninth tropical storm of the season, but it would not be clear until tomorrow if Nesat is going to have an impact on Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau said. Nesat is moving in a northerly direction, but there is a chance it could turn west and approach Taiwan tomorrow, forecaster Yen Tseng-hsi (顏增璽) said. If the Pacific high pressure system weakens and Nesat’s movement is influenced by nearby Typhoon Noru, then it could turn west only slightly and have less of an effect on Taiwan, but if the high pressure system maintains its current strength, Nesat could move closer to Taiwan and have a greater influence, Yen said.
CRIME
Fraud suspects repatriated
Eighteen Taiwanese who were arrested for telecom fraud in Bangkok earlier this month were repatriated to Taiwan yesterday. The 14 men and four women were among a group of 20 people arrested during a raid on a residential building in Bangkok on July 6. The other two suspects are Chinese women. The raid was triggered by intelligence provided by Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Thailand said.
NATIONAL DEFENSE
Anniversary to be marked
The air force is to host a series of events at its academy in Kaohsiung on Aug. 12 to mark the 80th anniversary of Air Force Day and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Academy vice president Teng En-lien (鄧恩憐) said the events are to include fighter jet stunts, performances by the air force military band, and exhibitions of military equipment and vehicles, including three painted fighter jets. A Ching-kuo indigenous defense fighter, an F-16 and a Mirage 2000 are to be painted with images symbolizing dragons and the wind, the national flag and the number “80” to mark the 80th anniversary of Air Force Day on Aug. 14, Teng said. The day commemorates a battle with Imperial Japanese warplanes over Hangzhou’s Jianqiao air base on Aug. 14, 1937. The anniversary events would be restricted to Taiwanese and their foreign-born spouses. Foreign spouses who are not citizens must be accompanied by their husbands or wives, the air force said.
HEALTH
Fresh tea drinks fail tests
The Consumer Protection Association of Taiwan on Tuesday said that 62 percent of handmade drinks in southern Taiwan were found to contain excessive levels of aerobic and E. coli bacteria during random checks it carried out recently. Thirty-one out of the 50 drink providers inspected in the Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung areas failed to meet sanitation requirements, association deputy secretary-general Hsu Pang-han (徐邦瀚) said. Some drinks were even found to contain aerobic bacteria that were eight to nine times higher than the standard of 200 colony-forming units per milliliter, which could cause acute gastroenteritis, he said. The results indicate poor sanitation and contamination during the production process, Hsu said, adding that dirty ice cubes could be the reason behind the high levels of aerobic bacteria. The substandard beverages included pearl milk tea, fruit punch and Guanyin milk tea, according to the tests. The test results would be forwarded to the health bureaus in the three cities, Hsu said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Taiwan’s music returns to NY
Taiwanese Waves, a concert program featuring the nation’s music, is to be showcased at the Central Park SummerStage music festival in New York on Saturday. SummerStage is New York City’s largest free summer music festival, featuring performers from around the world and complementing the social diversity of the city. The program’s debut at the festival last year attracted record numbers of concertgoers, and serenaded locals and tourists alike. This year, the program is expected to be about four hours long and include performances by popular Taiwanese artists including Golden Melody Award winner Sangpuy Katatepan Mavaliyw. The concert is to showcase Taiwan’s vibrant and diverse culture with performances in the Puyuma language, Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and Mandarin.
SOCIETY
Truck crash kills two
Two trailer trucks and a van early on Tuesday morning collided on Sun Yat-sen Freeway (Freeway No. 1), leaving the drivers of both trucks dead and traffic heavily congested in both directions for 4km. The crash, which occurred at the 63km mark on the freeway’s northbound lanes, was reported to authorities at 4:18am and five fire engines and four ambulances were dispatched to the scene, Taoyuan Fire Department Yangmei Township (楊梅) branch captain Chu Chin-hsiung (朱錦雄) said. Cutters and other rescue equipment were used to free the two truck drivers, who were stuck in their vehicles after the collision, Chu said. The two truck drivers, one in his early 50s and the other in his mid-30s, were pronounced dead on arrival at Chungli Ten-Chan General Hospital. The driver of the van sustained minor injuries.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
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