■ EARTHQUAKES
Temblors rattle Taiwan
Two earthquakes, measuring 5.5 and 4.6 on the Richter scale, rattled Taiwan before dawn yesterday, but there were no reports of casualties or damage, officials said. The epicenter of the stronger earthquake, which struck at 5:05am was about 27km east of Ilan at a depth of 65km, the Central Weather Bureau said in a statement. It could be felt in Taipei. The second quake hit at 6:09am about 5km southeast of Taitung at a depth of 26km, the weather bureau said.
■ CRIME
Man jailed in Cambodia
A Taiwanese man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Cambodia after being convicted of trying to smuggle heroin out of the country, court officials said yesterday. Wang Tien-su, 50, was arrested in February with 200g of heroin hidden in condoms in his shoes as he tried to pass through Phnom Penh International Airport, judge Iv Kim Sry said. He was found guilty on Tuesday and was fined US$12,500, the judge said. At least half a dozen Taiwanese, including a 90-year-old man, have been detained trying to smuggle heroin through the airport in the past year. Although drug arrests have increased, Cambodia is becoming an increasingly popular trafficking point for methamphetamines and heroin, particularly since Thailand toughened its stance on illegal drugs in 2002.
■ ACCIDENTS
Search for sailors continues
Navy vessels and helicopters continued the search yesterday for 26 sailors missing after a Panama-registered cargo ship sank off the northeastern coast. No additional survivors were found but two unidentified bodies were discovered, an official said. The 16,000-tonne Mezzanine, loaded with iron ore, capsized in rough seas on Tuesday. The 28-year-old vessel departed an Indonesian port last Saturday for the Chinese port of Tianjin. Only one person has been rescued, Herry Marthen Bakarbessy, an Indonesian sailor, who was pulled out of the water by the Coast Guard on Wednesday after floating at sea for about 20 hours, he said. "There were no traces of other missing sailors, but we will continue the rescue effort, with navy vessels searching in the high seas and patrol boats near shore," a Coast Guard official said.
■ POLITICS
Women campaign for DPP
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters in Taichung City yesterday formed a women's campaign team that will focus on drumming up support for the party ahead of the presidential election. Led by Deputy Presidential Office Secretary-General Lin Chia-lung's (林佳龍) wife, Liao Wan-ju (廖婉如), the team began its campaigning yesterday. Urging women to unite on political issues and speak up for their rights, Liao said women needed to take the March election seriously and turn out in big numbers. Yu Fang-chih (游芳枝), wife of DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), said the DPP attached great importance to women's rights and would continue to fight for gender equality if re-elected to the Presidential Office. Yu said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) recently announced measures for women's rights were nothing new. Ma's policies on women's issues are only a mirror of what the government has been fighting for over the last seven years, Yu 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:
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