China’s military exercises in the Yellow Sea and Bohai Bay would not disrupt flight services in the Taipei Flight Information Region, but container ships would have to bypass the areas, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday.
China’s Lianyungang Maritime Safety Administration on Friday announced that it was banning the entry of ships into certain areas south of the Yellow Sea from Saturday last week to Monday next week due to live-fire drills by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
China’s Dalian Maritime Affairs Bureau announced that entry to certain areas of Bohai Bay would be prohibited from yesterday to Sept. 8 due to military exercises.
Photo: Chen Hsin-yu, Taipei Times
China’s military exercises in Bohai Bay and areas south of the Yellow Sea would not disrupt international flight routes to and from Taiwan as they would not fall within the Taipei Flight Information Region, the ministry said.
However, the Maritime and Port Bureau has warned Yang Ming Marine Transport, Evergreen Marine Corp and Wan Hai Lines to avoid sending their container ships through these areas for safety reasons, it said.
The nation’s flight and shipping services have gradually resumed normal operations after all seven temporary danger zones China unilaterally declared last week expired yesterday.
Six of the zones expired at 12pm on Sunday, while the last danger zone expired at 10am yesterday, the ministry said.
The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and Maritime and Port Bureau would continue to guide aircraft and sea vessels to bypass the temporary danger zones to ensure their safety, the ministry said, adding that inbound, outbound and transit flights must avoid the seven temporary danger areas and operate on alternative routes.
On Sunday, the nation had 138 outbound flights, 145 inbound flights and 147 transit flights, CAA data showed.
From Thursday to Sunday, Taiwan had about 150 inbound flights and the same number of outbound flights daily, the ministry said, adding that China’s military drills did not lead to a drastic reduction in arriving or departing flights.
Transit flights gradually resumed after six of the seven temporary danger zones expired, it said, adding that air traffic control offices across the nation would carefully monitor the situation to ensure flight safety.
In terms of shipping services, China’s military drills mainly affected the vessels accessing the Port of Keelung, the Port of Taipei and the Port of Kaohsiung, the ministry said.
Vessels entering and leaving these ports must avoid entering the temporary danger zones, it said.
Maritime and Port Bureau data showed that seven international commercial ports around Taiwan on Sunday recorded 118 inbound and 120 outbound ships, which was not much different from the previous three days, the ministry said.
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