■ Crime
Family claims victim's body
Family members of a Taiwanese businesswoman who was murdered in Dongguan, in China's Guangdong Province last month flew to Dongguan Friday to claim her body, an official of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said yesterday. SEF Secretary-General Yen Wan-chin (顏萬進) said the body of Liu Mei-chuan will be cremated in Dongguan before being carried back to her Taiwan home, citing unnamed members of Liu's family as saying. Yen said the SEF has rendered aid to Liu's family to fly to Dongguan, where Liu was conducting business. Liu left her Dongguan house on Oct. 26 and then disappeared. Her decapitated body was later found nearby, and all her money in a bank account was discovered to have been withdrawn. Three of her former employees have been arrested on charges of murder.
■ Sports
Kenyan wins marathon
Kenya's David Kariuki and China's Hu Xiouyin (胡秀英) won the men's and women's divisions, respectively, in the Taroko International Marathon held yesterday near Hualien. Kariuki finished the 42.195km race with a time of 2:24:26, and was followed by Poland's Marek Dryja and South Africa's Vladimir Kotov. Hu won her second straight Taroko International Marathon, finishing with a time of 2:59:20. She also won last year's Taipei Marathon. More than 8,000 runners from around the world took part in the event, including 1,052 runners in the full marathon, and the rest in a half marathon or a shorter 5km race, through Taroko Gorge. The top ten winners were awarded medals and cash prizes ranging from NT$5,000 to NT$80,000 (US$151 to US$2,417).
■ Publishing
Magazine summit soon
The 2004 International Magazine Conference in Taipei is slated to open Nov. 15, with participants to discuss topics focusing on the expanding Asian magazine market and its challenges. The third annual conference will take place at the National Taiwan Science Education Center, with a handful of local and foreign experts in the magazine business on hand. The speakers will include Jan Hung-tze, chairman of the Magazine Business Association of Taipei; Patrick J. McGovern, founder and chairman of the US-based International Data Group; and Michael Vatikiotis, editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong-based journal the Far Eastern Economic Review. Details on the upcoming conference are available online at www.webs.xlab.com.tw/2004. Those who want to attend the conference can call (02) 2518-9922.
■ Cross-strait ties
Wu warns of nationalism
Taiwan must be watchful of the possibility of China resorting to nationalism to try to distract domestic attention from ongoing social disorder, Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) warned yesterday. Wu was referring to a Washington Post report which said the rule of the Chinese Communist Party was being challenged after more than 58,000 public demonstrations took place last year. Wu said Taiwan must not consider the problem as a purely domestic affair of China. In the face of domestic instability, authorities are likely to resort to national-ism to try to strengthen unity within the country and distract the people's attention from the problem, according to Wu.
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:
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
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