Thirteen Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone from 6am on Thursday to 6am yesterday, including a drone that almost circumnavigated Taiwan proper, the Ministry of National Defense said.
Flight path information released by the ministry showed the CH-4 drone flying clockwise off the northern coast of Taiwan then traveling south. It was not shown flying northward to the west of the nation.
It was the third instance that Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) drones have been detected on the eastern boundary of Taiwan’s air defense zone after drones were spotted on April 28 and May 3 on slightly different flight paths, the ministry said.
Photo: Reuters
An air defense identification zone is a region beyond a country’s territorial airspace, within which identification, location and air traffic control is required by a country for national security purposes.
The CH-4 “Rainbow” is an 8.5m-long, 18m wide reconnaissance and combat drone that China claims can fire air-to-ground missiles and fly at an altitude of 5,000m, making it difficult to bring down with standard anti-aircraft weapons.
The other PLA aircraft that entered Taiwan’s zone between 6am on Thursday and 6am yesterday were two other drones — a TB-001 and a BZK-005 — two Su-30s, six J-10s and one J-16, which are all fighter jets, and a Y-8 electronic warfare aircraft, the ministry said.
All of them, except the Y-8 and J-16, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, while the J-10s and Su-30s remained close to the line before turning back, the flight paths showed.
The TB-001 and BZK-005 drones flew to the south and southeast in a counterclockwise direction relative to Taiwan, the flight data showed.
In addition to the aircraft that entered the zone, 19 other PLA planes and four vessels were detected in the region during the 24-hour period, the ministry said.
Taiwan dispatched aircraft and vessels to shadow the Chinese craft and locked onto them with land-based missiles, it 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