DEFENSE
PLA aircraft skirt airspace
Chinese military aircraft flew east of Taiwan yesterday, the third such incident in as many days, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said in a statement. Two Y-8 military transport aircraft were spotted while returning to their base in China after a training mission, the ministry said. One of the aircraft skirted the nation’s airspace to the south as it flew over the Bashi Channel before turning northeast on a path that took it close to Japan’s Miyako Islands, while the other turned southeast after crossing the channel, it said. The ministry said it monitors all activities by Chinese military aircraft to ensure they pose no threat to the nation’s security.
ENVIRONMENT
Group urges beach cleanup
An environmentalist group yesterday called for intensified beach cleanup efforts to reduce marine litter that threatens Penghu’s coastline. In a report released after a four-day survey of four islands in the southern part of Penghu, the foundation Citizens of the Sea described the amount of marine waste accumulated along their coastline as “appalling and scary.” The survey was conducted by kayak from Thursday to Sunday in cooperation with the Taiwan Kayak Association. About 8 million tonnes of waste end up in the world’s oceans every year, with 43 percent of that amount coming from China, particularly the Pearl River Delta, Citizens of the Sea executive director Weng Chen-sheng (翁珍聖) said. A large amount of waste, including polystyrne, fishing nets, PET bottles and large electrical appliances, has been brought to Penghu’s shores by waves and currents, he said. As most boats cannot approach the coast, the waste can only be removed through beach cleanup activities, Weng said.
SOCIETY
Office guard punished
A Presidential Office guard accused of sexually harassing a female colleague will attend eight hours of gender equality education, Presidential Office spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said on Sunday regarding the first such punishment at the office. A sexual harassment complaint was filed in May. The office’s gender equality committee investigated the complaint and on July 24 decided that harassment did take place. Although the harasser had not committed a serious offense, gender equality education is needed for him to gain knowledge about the issue, Lin said. The committee’s decision can be appealed, Lin said, adding that the guard is to face another decision by the personnel office.
CRIME
Four Taiwanese detained
Four Taiwanese who were on Saturday repatriated from Indonesia on suspicion of telecoms fraud were detained on Sunday following an investigation by Taoyuan district prosecutors. Indonesia deported the four men, whose ages range from 24 to 37, to Taiwan on charges of breaking Indonesia’s immigration laws, according to a statement by the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office. Upon the suspects’ arrival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the office filed a request with a local court to detain them and the request was granted on Sunday, the statement said. The prosecutors found that the suspects allegedly started defrauding people in Bali in March, adding that the office will ask for help from the Ministry of Justice to obtain more evidence before deciding whether to indict them, the statement said. “We are determined to work with the Indonesian government to crack down on cross-border telecoms fraud,” the statement said.
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
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