TOURISM
Bureau offers vouchers
South Korean visitors to Taiwan will get a chance to sample local night market delicacies for free through a recent promotion by Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau, a bureau official said yesterday. Chen Pei-tsen, head of the Taiwan Tourism Bureau office in the South Korean capital of Seoul, said tourists traveling to Taiwan need only show evidence of their Taiwan plane reservations at the bureau’s office in Seoul to receive a NT$100 voucher valid at participating stalls in night markets around Taiwan. The scheme is part of an international tourism promotion to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of China next year. The vouchers can be used at specified night markets in Taipei, Keelung, Taichung, Chiayi, Fengshan and Yilan. The promotion runs through Feb. 28.
SCIENCE
EMBO elects scientist
A Taiwanese has been elected for the first time as an associate member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), Taiwan’s leading research institute said yesterday. Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠) was honored with a life-time membership in the Germany-based organization on the basis of his outstanding work in the field of biochemistry, the institute said. Wong is recognized internationally for his work in new synthetic chemistry and enzyme catalysis, which contributed greatly to the development of vaccines. The researcher was quoted as saying that he hopes the honor would help boost academic exchanges between Taiwan and Europe. His duties as an EMBO associate member include serving as an editing consultant for the EMBO journal, assisting young scholars in their research and participating in or leading EMBO’s research projects.
SCIENCE
APEC center to open
The APEC Research Center for Typhoon and Society (ACTS) will open its headquarters in Taipei next week. In September, the 39th Industrial Science and Technology Working Group (ISTWG) under APEC in Sendai, Japan, announced the establishment of the ACTS to deal with disasters resulting from typhoons in the Asia Pacific region. The National Taiwan University (NTU) last year was commissioned to set up a team and worked with the Philippines to establish the center. A proposal to establish the ACTS presented by Ben Jong-dao (周仲島), a professor in the Department of Atmosphere Science at NTU, was generally supported by the 21 economic entities at the 38th ISTWG meeting in April and was formally adopted in September. The Philippines will also establish a branch headquarters of the ACTS.
DIPLOMACY
Taiwan donates to Haiti
The Taiwanese government has donated US$200,000 to Haiti to help it stem a cholera epidemic that has reached its capital Port-au-Prince, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press statement yesterday. The death toll from Haiti’s cholera epidemic has reached more than 1,100 and about 18,000 Haitian people affected by the disease are in hospitals. The country faces huge problems with sanitation after a major earthquake struck the country in January, the ministry said, adding that the Centers for Disease Control had transported the first batch of medical equipment on Nov. 11 and is preparing for more provisions to help Taiwan’s Caribbean ally with disease prevention and medical treatment. The Taiwan government will continue to pay attention to the epidemic and provide necessary assistance, the ministry added.
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