NATIONAL DEFENSE
US Navy plane in flyby
A US Navy signals reconnaissance aircraft early yesterday flew within 12 nautical miles (22.2km) of the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島) in Pingtung County, the Twitter-based military news outlet Aircraft Spots reported. The plane reportedly took off from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, at 11:50pm on Saturday and flew over the Bashi Channel south of Taiwan. Ministry of National Defense spokesman Major General Shih Shun-wen (史順文) said that the military was “fully aware of all sea and air activities around the nation.” The flyby is the second time a US military aircraft has approached the nation’s airspace in the past week. A US Navy Boeing P-8A on Tuesday shadowed the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning, before passing through the Taiwan Strait and landing on Okinawa, the Web-based military news outlet Alert said.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Twin-city forum date set
The Taipei City Government yesterday confirmed that the annual Taipei-Shanghai forum is to be held in Shanghai on Thursday next week, and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was expected to attend. Ko is to depart for China the day before and return on Friday next week, the city government said, adding that this year’s forum is to focus on economic, trade, innovation and industrial exchanges.
ENTERTAINMENT
Golden Mask for VR series
The first episode of the animated virtual reality (VR) series Gloomy Eyes (咕魯米的眼睛) on Saturday won the Masque d’Or (Golden Mask) Grand Prize at the NewImages Festival Awards in Paris, France. It was the latest in a string of international awards the three-part series, produced by HTC Vive in collaboration with several international firms, has won since the first episode premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The nine-minute episode, narrated by Irish actor Colin Farrell, was commended by the four-member NewImages Festival jury for its groundbreaking storytelling and immersive perspective. Gloomy Eyes depicts a zombie struggling to find his place in a world fractured by conflict between zombies and humans.
AGRICULTURE
Chickens culled over H5N2
About 27,960 chickens on a Changhua County farm have been culled after the farm was confirmed to be infected with the H5N2 avian influenza virus, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said on Saturday. Samples taken last week from the free-range poultry farm in Fangyuan Township (芳苑) were confirmed to be infected with the virus subtype, the bureau said in a statement. Disinfection and bird flu surveillance and monitoring procedures are being carried out at nearby poultry farms, it added. Poultry farmers are urged to maintain proper ventilation in their facilities and to prevent their birds from coming in contact with wild birds to avoid an escalation of avian flu, the bureau said. Council of Agriculture data showed 26 poultry farms nationwide have had outbreaks of avian flu this year, resulting in the culling of 368,627 birds.
SPORTS
Lin signs with MLB team
Catcher Lyle Lin (林家正) on Saturday signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks, becoming the first Taiwanese player to join a Major League Baseball (MLB) team via the annual draft. Lin, 21, a junior at Arizona State University, said in a Facebook post that the deal was signed at the D-Backs spring training base in Phoenix and he would joining the D-Backs minor league team in its current season.
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