■ EMPLOYMENT
Internship grants offered
The National Youth Commission said yesterday that Taiwanese between the ages of 18 and 30 who have obtained an internship with a company overseas could apply for a grant of up to NT$50,000. The internship must be at least one month long, it said. The purpose of the grant is to encourage more young people to gain international experience and expand their global view, the commission said. Applications are open until April 30. Applicants must fill out and submit a registration form and a detailed prospectus on their upcoming internship opportunity. More information is available at the Web site www.nyc.gov.tw.
■ POLITICS
DPP to mark 'Tibet Day'
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday it would declare March 10 “Tibet Day” in all cities and counties governed by the party. “We will commemorate March 10 as Tibet Day to lend support to the Tibetans' fight for human rights and against political oppression,” DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said. A special activity will be held in Kaohsiung on that day, but Cheng did not elaborate on what it would involve. Tibetans worldwide did not celebrate Losar — the Tibetan New Year — in February this year to commemorate those who died in the uprising, as well as those who suffered during a violent crackdown by Chinese forces last year. Figures released by the Tibetan government-in-exile showed that 216 people died, while 6,000 more were jailed in last year's incident. Cheng said before the Dalai Lama, fled to India, Tibet had signed 17 peace agreements with China, but those agreements were “sugar-coated poison.” “Since then, Tibet had fallen under the control of China,” he said.
■ EDUCATION
No money for lunch
An additional 50,000 elementary and junior high school students were unable to pay for school lunches this semester, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The number of students who couldn't afford to pay for their lunches rose to 240,475 at the beginning of the new semester last month, an increase of 54,721 from 185,754 recorded at the end of the previous semester, which ended in late January, the ministry said. As many households have been hit hard by the economic slump, ministry officials said the government was working to expand the scope of its school lunch assistance program to include families whose parents are on unpaid leave or have been laid off for more than a month. Previously, only low and middle-low income families and those hit by natural disasters qualified for the benefits, officials said.
■ DEFENSE
Ma promises troop cuts
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday he hoped to see a further reduction in the nation's armed forces. Ma said many people are not used to easing tensions in the Taiwan Strait and he hoped to find a way to deal with the new situation. “It is no longer possible to keep a 600,000-strong army or contend that there is one country on either side of the Taiwan Strait as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) claimed,” he said. “Our strategy is to use our soft power as a deterrence and maintain effective defensive power.” Ma made the remarks after listening to a briefing presented by the Ministry of National Defense at the Presidential Office. Ma vowed to forge ahead with his election promise to replace the conscription system with enlistment. The goal is to achieve a full replacement in six-and-a-half years, he 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