■ EDUCATION
Academic wins math prize
Liu Tai-ping (劉太平), director of Academia Sinica’s Institute of Mathematics, was awarded the Cataldo e Angiola Agostinelli International Prize by Italy’s Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei yesterday. The prize is awarded biannually to an eminent international scholar in the field of pure or applied mathematics or mathematical physics. Liu was cited for his research in nonlinear partial differential equations, shock wave theory and kinetic theory. After receiving his doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1973, the Taiwan-born Liu taught at University of Maryland, New York University and Stanford University. He will receive the award on June 11 in Rome.
■ SCIENCE
Photo exhibition planned
In celebration of the fifth birthday of FORMOSAT-2, the nation’s first independently developed remote sensing satellite, the National Space Organization (NSPO) will host a three-month “FORMOSAT-2 Photograph Exhibition” at the National Science and Technology Museum in Kaohsiung, beginning today. FORMOSAT-2 was launched on May 21, 2004. The exhibition will display images that the satellite took at key moments, such as the Sichuan Earthquake and Hurricane Katrina.
■ GOVERNMENT
Public backs downsizing
A majority of the public supports a plan to downsize the Executive Yuan. A survey conducted by the Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission (RDEC) found the plan to cut one-third of the Executive Yuan’s subordinated agencies was backed by 58 percent of respondents. The legislature is reviewing an amendment to the Organic Act of the Executive Yuan (行政院組織法) to cut the number of agencies from 37 to 29 — 13 ministries, nine commissions, three independent agencies and four subordinate bodies — by 2011. The RDEC drafting the amendment, which has been criticized for not including the Overseas Compatriots Affairs Commission into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The RDEC said there was massive pressure from overseas compatriot groups to keep the commission independent. The survey found that 54 percent of the respondents supported the commission’s separate status, 21 percent disagreed and 21 percent had no opinion. More than 50 percent of respondents backed the RDEC’s proposal to keep the Council of Indigenous People, the Veterans Affairs Commission and the Council of Hakka Affairs as independent agencies. The telephone survey of residents over the age of 20 was conducted on May 13 and May 14 with 878 successful interviews.
■ EDUCATION
MOE certifies host families
The Ministry of Education (MOE) has recruited 500 families to host international exchange students, achieving half of its goal for this year, the ministry said yesterday. In a press release, the ministry said the families were located in the cities and counties of Kaohsiung, Taichung, and Taipei, as well as Changhua and Taoyuan counties. About 30 families from eastern Taiwan had also applied for the training program, the ministry said. The ministry launched a nationwide training and certification program for potential host families of international students on Dec 30. The project — a collaboration between the ministry, the Rotary Club and several local schools — aims recruit 1,000 host families by the end of this year. Families that complete a certification workshop are eligible to be matched up with international students who are looking for host families, the ministry 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