■ Diplomacy
UK envoy pays courtesy call
Great Britain's top liaison officer in Taiwan, Derek Marsh, paid a courtesy call on Taipei County chief Su Chen-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday to exchange views on a wide range of topics. Marsh and Su exchanged opinions on matters pertaining to the prospects for the development of Taipei Harbor, as well as a MRT system linking the greater Taipei area with Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taoyuan County, and the Taipei MRT expansion project. Su also helped Marsh gain insight into the latest political and economic developments in Taiwan. Pointing to the defeat of the ruling DPP candidate in the recent Hualien county commissioner by-election, Marsh asked Su whether the DPP is also having difficulty maintaining grass-roots support in Taipei County. Su, a member of the DPP Central Standing Executive Committee, answered that the Hualien by-election was by no means a litmus test for next year's presidential election.
■ Aviation
CAA blamed for plane crash
Taiwan's civil aviation authority has been accused of failing to issue a bad-weather warning and was to blame for the crash of a Macau-bound cargo plane which killed two pilots, it was reported yesterday. Local television quoted a retired Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) official saying both Hong Kong and Japanese aviation authorities had issued warnings to aircraft in the Taiwan Strait both before and after last December's air tragedy. The SIGMET (significant meteorology) reports were designed to provide information concerning en-route weather phenomena which may affect aircraft safety. But the CAA had failed to issue similar alerts as the ATR-72 TransAsia Airways cargo aircraft plowed into the Taiwan Strait in bad weather on Dec. 21, said the retired official, who was not named. CAA denied negligence, saying it had followed international aviation procedures.
■ Politics
Lien wants pan-blue unity
KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) yesterday called for unity among members and supporters of the KMT and its ally the PFP to win the next presidential election to be held in March next year. Lien urged KMT members not to be complacent about the KMT's victory in the recent Hualien county commissioner by-election, in which KMT stalwart Hsieh Shen-shan beat his rival from the ruling DPP, You Ying-lung(游盈隆). Noting that next year's presidential election will be a much harder battle, Lien said "all the pan-blue alliance members should be even more firmly united."
■ Diplomacy
Tiaoyutais still thorny issue
The government is hoping to talk with Japan in the next month or two on the management of the fishery resources of the controversial Tiaoyutai Islands, the Fisheries Administration under the Council of Agriculture said yesterday. Fishery officials said that after a dozen consultations over the past seven years, Taiwan and Japan reached a tentative understanding on the Tiaoyutai Islands this June. Both sides agreed that they would shelve political disputes on sovereignty issues to protect the interests of the traditional fishing grounds of both countries, and would discuss only the issue of management of fishery resources.
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