■ HORTICULTURE
Mayor inaugurates garden
Kaohsiung City Government’s tropical garden was inaugurated in Siaogang District (小港) yesterday. Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) told reporters that the garden was expected to help mitigate the pollution caused by China Steel, CPC Corp, Taiwan and Taipower Corp plants in the district. Chen said the garden is the biggest of its kind in Taiwan and the amount of green space in the neighborhood may reach 110 hectares along with the nearby Fongshan Reservoir. Chen said the city is working to establish a forest park at a cost of NT$600 million (US$18.6 million), adding that construction may be completed in October.
■ TOURISM
Taiwan targets Brits
British taxis, subway trains and news media have been recruited to help attract visitors to Taiwan, as part of a tourism promotion blitz launched in the UK. The Tourism Bureau paid 75 London black cab drivers a total of £250,000 (US$390,000) to carry “Where else but Taiwan” posters over the next three months. The bureau has also commissioned British public relations and advertising companies to design and put out 1,000 ads promoting Taiwan as one of Asia’s least-known travel destinations in the London subway system over the next six weeks. A Taiwan-themed promotional display will also be shown on panels next to escalators in several busy subway stations. In addition, the bureau will place ads in publications, including the Sunday Times Travel Magazine, the Daily Telegraph Magazine and BBC Lonely Planet Magazine. Last year, Britons made 44,815 visits to Taiwan, including 19,796 holidaymakers and 16,500 business visits.
■ RESEARCH
Local academics win award
Two Taiwanese academics have won the 23rd Khwarizmi International Award (KIA) for their contribution to the advancement of science, Academia Sinica said. Li Hsiang-nan (李湘楠), a research fellow and deputy director of Academia Sinica’s Institute of Physics, and Cheng Shun-Jen (鄭舜仁), a research fellow at the Institute of Mathematics, were presented the award by Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi at a ceremony in Tehran on Sunday. The KIA is awarded annually by the Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology. It is presented for outstanding achievements in research, innovation and invention in fields related to science and technology. Li specializes in perturbative quantum chromodynamics, while Cheng’s specializations are Lie algebras, Lie superalgebras and representation theory. The award is named after Abu Jafar Mohammad Ibn Mousa Khwarizmi, an eighth-century Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer.
■ HORTICULTURE
AIT comes under fire
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) came under fire yesterday when several Internet users lambasted the attitude of its consular officers. An apparently disgruntled visa-seeker left messages on AIT’s Facebook page calling it “Assholes in Taiwan” after he was allegedly treated rudely by a consular official. Other Internet users also made similar complaints. AIT has refused to comment on the issue, saying it respects the privacy of all visa applicants, but added that its visa approval rate was 95 percent and complaints were rare. Some people have also left positive messages on AIT’s Facebook page, praising AIT for giving prompt answers to inquiries and saying officers were helpful and respectful.
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