■ Conservation
Record number of birds
A record 866 black-faced spoonbills have been recorded in the southern Tainan area, according to the results of a census carried out yesterday. The number exceeds the 860 recorded on Dec. 25 last year, conservation groups said, noting that a reserve area in Chiku Township provides habitat for the largest cluster of the endangered migratory birds from Siberia, as 70 percent of the total fly into the conservation area for the winter every year. The birds are expected to leave Taiwan early next month as the weather warms up and they return to their nesting grounds.
PHOTO: CHEN YI-MIN, TAIPEI TIMES
■ Politics
China changed status quo
Facing China's relentless criticism of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) proposal to scrap the National Unification Council and guidelines, the Mainland Affairs Council yesterday said that Beijing should be held responsible for changing the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. As China dramatically boosts its military might against Taiwan and passed the "Anti-Secession" Law in March last year, it must shoulder the responsibility for sabotaging peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and corroding the foundation of cross-strait peace, the council said that in a statement released yesterday afternoon. The statement reiterated that the Republic of China is an independent sovereign state and is not part of China. The 23 million people of Taiwan have the final say on any change to the status quo and Beijing does not have any right to interfere or obstruct Taiwanese people from deciding their own future. The council made the remarks in response to a statement issued by the Chinese Communist Party yesterday. The statement, carried by the official Xinhua news agency, warned that Chen's proposal to scrap guidelines calling for the nation's unification with China is stoking dangerous tension. The statement also said that Chen's actions threaten to "destroy peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region."
■ Defense
BAE to upgrade F-16 radars
BAE Systems of Yonkers, New York, has won a US$9.32 million contract to provide for the hardware and software upgrade of the AN/ALR56M radar-warning receivers to be installed on Taiwan's F-16 jet fighters, the US Department of Defense said on Friday. The deal was struck under the foreign military sales program, the Pentagon said in a news release. The radar-warning receiver upgrade project is scheduled for completion in January 2008.
■ Politics
Ma to visit the US
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is scheduled to visit the US from March 19-27, chief of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Los Angeles confirmed on Saturday. According to Wei Wu-lien (魏武鍊), director of TECO in Los Angeles, Ma will arrive in Los Angeles on March 19, from where he will immediately transfer to Washington, New York and Boston. Ma is likely to call on Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and meet with local overseas Chinese community representatives during his one-night stopover after he returns from the East Coast on March 26 and has visited San Francisco, Wei said.
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