■ Crime
Jail term for nude pictures
A 21-year-old Taipei man was sentenced yesterday to six months in jail for making public -- via the Internet -- nude pictures that he had taken of himself. The man, surnamed Hsiao, was convicted of obscene behavior. Hsiao, an employee at a high-tech company, had posted full-body pictures on a Web site, giving the general public easy access to the photos. According to the police, Hsiao posted the photos in an effort to attract homosexual admirers. He will be able to avoid jail time, however, by paying a NT$162,000 fine.
■ Missing foreigner
Chen asks public's help
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday urged people to assist in the search for a US citizen who went missing in Taiwan in May last year. Chen made the call in the latest issue of the A-bian Electronic Paper, an Internet newsletter named after Chen's nickname "A-bian." Chen said that Barbara Klita sent him a second letter recently asking for his assistance in the search for her missing son, Fryderyk Mieszko Frontier. In addition to directing government agencies to step up their search efforts, Chen said he hopes ordinary citizens can also assist in the campaign. "Those who have leads about Frontier's whereabouts are welcome to contact relevant government authorities or inform Mrs Klita, " Chen said in the newsletter. Klita sent her first letter to Chen late last year. Chen published that letter along with Frontier's photo and Klita's e-mail address -- barbaraklita@collegeclub.com -- in the Dec. 18 issue of the newsletter.
■ Avian flu
Experts aid Vietnam
The government will send an expert to Vietnam to assist in its campaign against avian flu outbreaks, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday. Speaking at a regular news conference, Lin Sung-huan (林松煥), director of the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Department, said the Council of Agriculture has already sent a delegation of animal disease and quarantine experts to Vietnam to investigate its avian flu situation. In addition, Lin said, Tsai Hsiang-jung (蔡向榮), an associate professor in National Taiwan University's department of veterinary medicine, will leave for Vietnam next Monday to help with bird flu containment efforts. Meanwhile, Lin said, the Department of Health has donated medical supplies to Vietnam, including protective clothing, caps, surgical gloves and N95 surgical masks. The medical goods were delivered on Wednesday. Tsai will donate the goods to Vietnam on behalf of the government in a ceremony to be held in Hanoi next week, Lin said, adding that the Vietnamese government has expressed its gratitude for Taiwan's generous assistance.
■ Weather
Cold front arriving
Whether campaign activities on the last weekend ahead the presidential election will go smoothly depends on the weather. And the word from the Central Weather Bureau is that this weekend will be cold and rainy. A cold front will arrive today and bring rains to the north and the east over the weekend, the bureau said yesterday. Forecasters said temperatures will drop dramatically, with the highest temperature tomorrow being 19 degrees Celsius in the north. They said the weather in the center and south will remain pleasant. Low temperatures in the center over the weekend would be about 23 degrees Celsius and 26 degrees Celsius in the south.
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