■ ENVIRONMENT
EPA urges online worship
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday urged the public to stop burning incense sticks and ritual money to honor the dead and opt instead for online worshipping to better protect the environment. The call came ahead of Monday’s Tomb Sweeping Festival. The practice not only worsens air pollution but could also cause fires, the EPA said. “We can now choose to pay homage to our ancestors in a modern and environmentally friendly way by worshipping online or donating the money meant for the offerings to charities,” it said in a statement. Environmental agencies have also offered to collect the paper money from households and temples to burn in state incinerators that can treat the exhaust.
■ TOURISM
Taiwanese look to heavens
Eight Taiwanese have applied to take part in a space journey at a cost of US$200,000 per person, according to Royal China Express, the Taiwan agent for Virgin Galactic, a space tourism operator affiliated with billionaire Richard Branson’s London-based Virgin Group. Virgin Galactic has collected fares from more than 330 aspiring amateur astronauts who are willing to spend big money to experience about six minutes of suborbital spaceflight, the local travel agency said. Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spaceship SpaceShipOne will be airlifted into the skies for its maiden flight at the end of this year after receiving approval from NASA, it said. The eight Taiwanese aspiring space travelers include a surgeon, engineers at the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, businessmen, and a couple operating a jewelry business, the travel agency said.
■ ARTS
Yo-Yo Ma prepares project
Renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma (馬友友) has prepared a “Taichung Project” for his visit to Taiwan later this month that will include an outdoor concert for local music lovers to see “how a cello talks with stars in the sky,” Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) said yesterday. “It is a music project especially for Taichung City,” Hu said as he and organizers announced the concert featuring Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, scheduled for April 24. In addition to the concert, the visit will include two seminars at which Ma will speak with local musicians. One will be aimed at young people between 12 and 18 years old, the organizers said. Hu said he expects the Taichung Project to “trigger a musical fever” in the city. Ma’s Taichung concert will be the only open-air performance of three he will give in Taiwan as part of his “Silk Road Project.” The other two concerts will be held at the National Concert Hall in Taipei on April 22 and at the Jhihde Hall in Kaohsiung City on April 25, the organizers said.
■ EDUCATION
Card goes multi-purpose
The International Student Identity Card (ISIC) issued to students in Taiwan has now become a multi-purpose card, an official of a cultural and education foundation said. The card, which was previously used mainly by students intending to travel abroad to obtain cheaper flights and other savings, can now be used as a student ID, an Easy Card for travel on public transport travel and an I-cash card, for making small purchases. “Five schools in Taiwan have so far signed up to use the ISIC,” said James Tsai, director of the Kang Wen Culture and Education Foundation, adding that more schools plan to adopt the cards. The ISIC is issued by the ISIC Association and is the only internationally accepted proof of full-time student status.
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