■ Culture
Aboriginal games coming
The nationwide Aboriginal games are slated to be held from March 25 until March 28 in Kaohsiung County, with more than 3,000 Aboriginal athletes from 24 cities and counties taking part, the games' preparatory committee announced. A total of 3,078 male and female athletes are expected to compete in 14 events during the games, which will be held at 10 venues around Kaohsiung County, the committee's executive director Su Hui-yueh (蘇慧月) said. The torch run marking the opening of the biennial games is scheduled to start at the Maolin National Park on March 16. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is expected to attend the opening ceremony, to be held at the Kaohsiung County Stadium on March 25, Su said. The events comprising the games are: track and field, relay racing, road running, tug of war, weightlifting, judo, traditional archery, Aboriginal weightlifting, wrestling, dance and worship rituals.
■ Charity
Wheelchairs donated
The Taiwan Association in the Philippines donated 50 wheelchairs to the city government of Pasay on Sunday. The donation was presented by John Lu (呂秀男), chairman of the group of Taiwanese businesspeople operating in the Philippines, to Pasay Mayor Peewee Trinidad at a ceremony at Pasay City Hall, in which Taiwan's Representative to the Philippines, Wu Hsin-Hsing (吳新興), as well as more than 300 city officials and police officers took part. Pasay is one of 17 satellite cities in the Great Manila region. With a population of 500,000 and active economic activities, the city is known for its entertainment and convention centers. The Taiwan Association has regularly supported charitable activities in the Philippines since its founding 23 years ago to promote friendly and cooperative relations between the Taiwanese and Philippine people, Lu said.
■ Agriculture
Chen gives farmers awards
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) honored 34 farmers with "Shen Nung" or "farm god" prizes, as well as naming 18 "model farmers" yesterday in recognition of their contributions to agriculture. Speaking at the ceremony, which was sponsored by the Council of Agriculture, the president expressed hope that the awards will persuade more people, especially the younger generation, to enter the agricultural sector. The president noted that small-scale farmers are the mainstay of Taiwan's agriculture but that they are relatively uncompetitive in terms of operation costs.
■ History
Lesson from Guatamala
A researcher at Academia Sinica recommended yesterday that the govern-ment take a leaf from Guatemala's book and compile a report on the memories of the victims of Taiwan's period of autho-ritarian rule. In a speech at the Presidential Office, Aca-demia Sinica Researcher Wu Nei-teh (吳乃德) said turning the political legacy of past authoritarian rulers into a democratic asset is a diffi-cult challenge. Guatemala has set up a historical cla-rification commission to collect the testimonies of more than 20,000 victims who suffered at the hands of that country's past military dictators and compile them into a book. Given that Taiwan is plagued by the different ethnic groups' different perceptions of the past government, Wu sugges-ted that we follow the Guatemalan model in dealing with the country's past.
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