SOCIETY
Last ‘comfort woman’ dies
The last known Taiwanese “comfort woman” died on May 10 at the age of 92, the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation said yesterday. The term refers to women who were forced to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers during World War II. A private funeral was held by the woman’s family, the foundation said in a Facebook post, adding that it was attended by foundation chair Theresa Yeh (葉德蘭). The news of her passing was announced only yesterday, because the woman had asked for privacy before her passing, it said. Hopefully, the history of sexual slavery will not be forgotten with the passing of “comfort women” in Taiwan, the foundation said. It added that it would continue to demand that the Japanese government apologize and compensate such women and their family members for exploiting them during the war.
AVIATION
Unknown object halts flights
An unidentified flying object detected at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport resulted in flight disruption that affected more than 1,000 passengers yesterday morning, Taoyuan International Airport Co said. Flights were halted in and out of Taiwan’s main international gateway after a China Airlines pilot spotted the object, the company said. The closure lasted for about 40 minutes before air traffic resumed at about 10:10am, the company said, adding that seven flights were affected. Five flights approaching the airport for landing or preparing for takeoff — those belonging to Peach Aviation, EVA Airways, Starlux Arlines and AirAsia — were delayed, affecting 919 passengers. A Cathay Pacific and a Xiamen Airlines flight arriving from overseas carrying 280 passengers were diverted to Kaohsiung International Airport, the company said. Airport authorities were unable to identify the object, which was spotted only by the China Airlines pilot, but they do not rule out the possibility that it was a drone, the company said. Members of the public are encouraged to report suspected drone sightings to the airport at (03) 273-2043, it added.
SOCIETY
Choreographer dies at 97
Choreographer Liu Feng-shueh (劉鳳學), the first Taiwanese to hold a doctoral degree in dance, the first to promote Chinese modern dance and one of the first National Arts Award winners, died at home in Taipei on Wednesday. She was 97 years old. Born in China in 1925, Liu began learning ballet when she was a child. In the 1950s, she began to study, collect and document the dances of Taiwan’s indigenous communities. Neo-classical Dance Co, founded by Liu in 1976, lists on its Web site the “four small trees” Liu said she planted: her modern dance works, Confucian dance works, Tang dynasty court dance and music, and a study of indigenous dances. She won acclaim from the Congress of Research on Dance in the US as an outstanding academic of dance in 1977 and 2004, according to the National Culture and Arts Foundation, which named her one of the five winners of the first edition of the National Arts Awards in 1997. The New York-based Dance Notation Bureau in 2005 called Liu “an authority on the Chinese dance tradition” and “a pioneer of modern dance in Taiwan.” Her digitized dance notation that documents the styles she studied has been credited as a precious recording of the oriental dance history in Taiwan.
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