■ Crime
Police seize contraband
Police have seized more than 100,000 pirated discs in a raid on a paint factory in Linkou, Taipei County, officials at the Taoyuan Prosecutors' Office said yesterday. Police said that suspects used the paint factory as a cover for producing pirated movies, music, pornography and software. Police also found various machines in the factory, including copying, molding and pressing equipment. The factory workers were all taken in for questioning.
■ War
Airlines avoid war zone
Taiwan's two leading air carriers have not started using alternative flight routes to Europe because of the war in Iraq, airline executives said yesterday. Both China Airlines (CAL) and EVA Airways have applied for permission to use several alternative routes for their Europe-bound flights, but are not using them for the time being, as the war in Iraq poses no immediate risk to the routes. In an attempt to play down their plan to reroute Europe-bound flights through Chinese airspace, both CAL and EVA said the detours are a precautionary measure that they have no intention of using for the time being.
■ Security
Nation beefs up security
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) went to a military command post in Taipei yesterday to learn about the combat readiness of the nation as the US-led war on Iraq entered its third day. At the Hengshan Command Post, the president was briefed by Ministry of National Defense (MND) officials about contingency plans amid tension following the outbreak of war. Chen learned that after the US formally launched attacks on Iraq Thursday, the MND started a mechanism to step up the protection of the nation's security, on one hand monitoring any changes in cross-strait relations and on the other maintaining a careful watch to make sure terrorists do not sneak into Taiwan. In a related development, Kaohsiung Harbor authorities reported that they had stepped up security checks. Kaohsiung Harbor Administration and Coast Guard Administration officials said that they are on guard against illegal activities such as infiltration, sabotage and smuggling. Security officials are also stepping up protection of US and Middle East-registered vessels.
■ Society
Chen attends mask festival
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said that "one's imagination can take one to a rich world" when he attended the 2003 Miaoli International Mask Festival in northern Taiwan yesterday. Chen and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) were invited to attend the opening ceremony of the festival, which is exhibiting more than 300 masks from 40 countries and will last until April 27. Noting that the world is like a global village with ever increasing contact, Chen said that in Taiwan, the most obvious examples are the local cities and counties sponsoring international cultural activities, such as the mask festival. Miaoli County Magistrate Fu Hsueh-peng (傅學鵬) announced that the festival, which used to be held every two years, will be held every year from next year, in the hope of putting the festival on the world stage and helping stimulate tourism as part of the government's goal to double the number of foreign tourist arrivals as part of its "Challenge 2008" six-year national development plan.
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