■ HEALTH
Bureau warns against treats
The Bureau of Health Promotion is reminding those watching their weight to avoid indulging in too many Moon Festival treats or to exercise more as the holiday approaches. Just one small, 60g mooncake can contain as many as 300 calories, the bureau said yesterday. The bureau suggests cutting back on one bowl of rice or walking briskly for one hour to compensate for each 60g mooncake consumed. The bureau warned consumers to be wary of pomelos as well. Although fruit is healthy, the popular treat that is a staple on the Moon Festival table contains more calories than most people suspect. The bureau said that just two segments of a pomelo can contain 60 calories and eating a whole jumbo pomelo can mean an extra 600 calories. This year's Moon Festival falls on Tuesday.
■ CULTURE
Confucius gets birthday bash
Taipei Confucian Temple is organizing a celebration of Confucius' 2,557th birthday, which falls on Friday next week, a temple official said yesterday. The temple will hold a cultural fair along Dalong Street by the temple on Thursday and Friday next week with exhibits on temples and archeological findings in Datong District, where the temple is located. A photo exhibit featuring the nation's Confucian temples will open at the Taipei temple on Thursday and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) will lead a ceremony the next day in honor of the "supreme teacher," the official said. Confucian groups from Japan, South Korea and Vietnam have been invited by the temple to take part in a seminar on Sept. 29 and Sept. 30, the focus of which will be the impact of modernism on Confucianism and the future of Confucianism.
■ POLITICS
Nominees up for review
Lawmakers have reached a consensus on holding a vote next Thursday on whether to approve President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) nominations for the Judicial Yuan, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said on Tuesday after presiding over a consultative meeting of caucus whips from across party lines. The meeting agreed to hold three Committee of the Whole sessions to screen the nominees, with the Judicial Yuan presidential and vice presidential nominees to be screened today and the eight grand justice nominees to be screened tomorrow and on Wednesday, Wang said. The legislature plans to hold an extra session on Thursday to vote on the nominees, Wang said, adding that the vote on the Judicial Yuan presidential and vice presidential nominees would take place Thursday morning and the vote on the grand justice nominees would be held in the afternoon.
■ HEALTH
Officials push check-ups
The Taipei City Government yesterday encouraged residents to take advantage of Taipei Citizen Health cards and get free check-ups. The card, available since July, allows Taipei residents to receive a free health check-up after accumulating two card points by volunteering at local hospitals, receiving vaccines or attending forums on health-related issues. Card holders who earn 24 points are eligible for a free advanced health examination valued at NT$12,000 at any Taipei City Hospital branch, the city's Department of Health said. The department said only 27.8 percent of Taipei residents over the age of 65 visit their doctors for regular check-ups -- a figure the department hopes to raise through the points program. All registered Taipei residents are eligible for the card.
■ CRIME
Illegal butcher arrested
Prosecutors and police arrested a man yesterday during a raid on an illegal slaughter house in Tuku Township (土庫), Yunlin County. More than two tonnes of suspect beef, bones and offal were seized in four freezers in the slaughter house and in the house of the suspect, identified only by his surname, Wang. Investigators had been keeping tabs on Wang for nearly six months before staging the raid after being tipped off that Wang had been butchering sick cattle and selling them to meat wholesalers, vendors and meat processors. Wang was preparing to sell a large amount of the beef in the run-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls next Tuesday, according to the police.
■ CRIME
Woman hides as man
Police have arrested a female criminal who has been on the run disguised as a man for eight years, press reports said yesterday. Chen Hui-fang (陳慧芳), 33, was convicted eight years ago of armed burglary and Internet fraud but failed to turn herself in to serve her sentence. Chen disguised herself so well that even her girlfriend did not know that "he" was a she. To convince her girlfriend that she was a man, Chen tied a fake penis -- a condom filled with cotton -- between her thighs, press reports said. Over the years, Chen continued to commit crimes and was caught once, but police released her after questioning. When she was caught again on Monday, police realized that Chen was using a fake ID card and did not "look like" a man, because Chen had no Adam's apple and had no hair on her upper lip. When police threatened to take Chen for a medical examination to clarify her sex, she admitted her identity.
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