■ LEISURE
Marathon updates available
To provide better service to the participants of the 2008 ING Taipei Marathon today, the Taipei City Government is to present real-time race results to allow spectators to obtain updates via mobile devices. The Taipei City Department of Information Technology said spectators could obtain real-time results for individual runners through laptops, PDAs and cell phones. The system will also actively dispatch updates via SMS to subscribers. A total of 3,100 runners have already registered for this service. Viewers can also watch the marathon via live-streaming video at the Results Finder Web site. LCD screens at MRT Taipei City Hall Station and MRT Taipei Main Station will broadcast the event live. Twenty laptops with wireless broadband connection will be placed at the first floor lobby of City Hall to allow residents to use this new service, the department said. To access the Results Finder, visit the Web site at: http://2008ing.taipei.gov.tw/
■ ENVIRONMENT
Hsuehshan fire burns firs
A forest fire on Hsuehshan (雪山) was put out on Friday afternoon, but not before 4 hectares of firs and arrow bamboo trees burned to the ground. The fire on the 3,886m mountain in northern Taiwan was ignited on Thursday afternoon by a six-member mountain-climbing group that set a fire to alert a rescue helicopter of the exact location of an injured climber, who fractured a bone in a fall near a mountain lodge. While the injured climber, surnamed Wu, was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Chiayi for treatment, the fire quickly spread. Firefighters rushed to the scene, but were hampered by a lack of water and the mountainous terrain. They called on the Ministry of the Interior to send a helicopter to help combat the blaze. The fire was brought under control on Friday at around noon and was fully extinguished by 4:50pm.
■ POLITICS
China warns Vatican
Relations between China and the Vatican can only improve if the Holy See ditches ties with Taiwan and stops using religion to interfere in China’s domestic affairs, China’s state media quoted a top Chinese official as saying on Friday. China’s 8 million to 12 million Catholics are split between a state-sanctioned Church, and an “underground” one that rejects government control and answers only to Rome. Du Qinglin (杜青林), head of China’s United Front Work Department which deals with religious and ethnic minorities and non-Communists, said it was up to the Vatican to improve relations, China’s official Xinhua news agency said. The Vatican must also sever its ties with Taiwan, he said.
■ SOCIETY
Migrants Day celebrated
Non-immigrants and immigrants celebrated International Migrants Day — which fell on Thursday this year — with traditional dishes, music and dance from the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar in an international immigrant exposition organized by the Ministry of the Interior and the National Immigration Agency in Taipei yesterday. Recalling the country’s history, Minister of the Interior Liao Liou-yi (廖了以) said Taiwan was actually a country of migrants, “I’m the seventh generation since my ancestors migrated to Taiwan [from China] and 160 years ago my ancestors were newcomers here just like you.” Liao said the number of migrants in Taiwan — including those who came through marriage, for work or other reasons — has reached more than 900,000.
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