■WEATHER
Tropical storm on its way
The Central Weather Bureau said yesterday that Tropical Storm Hagupit is likely to affect Taiwan next week. At 2am yesterday, Hagupit was centered 1,430km west of Guam, packing maximum sustained winds of 72kph and moving west-northwest at 17kph in the direction of the Philippines and Taiwan, the bureau reported. The tropical storm was projected to be positioned 780km east of Manila at 2am today, and ships operating in waters east of the Philippines were advised to exercise caution. Hsiao Chia-sen (蕭家森), a forecaster at the bureau, said the outer edges of Hagupit were expected to start affecting Taiwan’s weather tomorrow and the storm was likely to move closer during the two following days.
■EVENTS
Taipei marks car-free day
The Taipei City Government invited the public to join its annual biking activity today in celebration of this year’s Taipei International Car-free Day. The biking activity will gather at 6:30am in front of Taipei City Hall and leave at 8:30am on a 16km route to the Gongguan Riverside Plaza. People are welcome to sign up for the event on-site and the first 1,000 participants will receive a free T-shirt. Taipei City’s Transportation Department will prepare 500 bicycles for rent at the event. The rental fee is NT$200 and participants who rent bicycles will be required to leave picture ID as a deposit. Tomorrow, the Xinyi shopping district will be closed off to cars and scooters from 7am to 5pm as part of the car-free activities. The area between Songgao Road, Xinyi Road, Shifu Road and Songren Road will be car-free for the day. People who take a bus to the district can ride for free if they carry an EasyCard.
■DEFENSE
Troop cut plan not final: Ma
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said on Friday night that the number of troops to be cut was open to discussion as the main goal is to establish an elite deterrent force and enhance overall combat capabilities. “We will not trim our armed forces simply for sake of trimming and our ultimate goal is to establish a ‘lean and mean’ force capable of safeguarding national security,” Ma was quoted as telling a group of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers at a dinner. Presidential Office spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said Ma made the remarks after KMT Legislator Shuai Hua-ming (帥化民) expressed concern about the Ministry of National Defense’s plan to cut 70,000 soldiers in the next four years to meet Ma’s campaign promise of establishing an all-volunteer military. During the meeting, Ma also reaffirmed the government’s determination of continuing military buildup and combat preparedness plans.
■AVIATION
Bali flight hits turbulence
China Airlines (華航) flight 687 yesterday encountered turbulence on its way from Taipei to Bali, Indonesia, injuring 30 people. Eight of the injured, including four crew members, were admitted to a hospital in Bali for treatment after the plane touched down safely, China Airlines spokesman Bruce Chen (陳鵬宇) said. The other injured were given first aid on board and released after the plane arrived in Bali at 2:24pm. The plane flew back to Taipei as scheduled last night, the spokesman said. The four-year old Boeing 747-400 left Taoyuan International Airport at 9.23am with 339 passengers and 19 crew members. The incident took place two hours later when the plane was flying over Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. The aircraft dropped rapidly, causing unsecured passengers to hit their heads.
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