EARTHQUAKES
Rescue team back from NZ
An urban search and rescue team returned yesterday after wrapping up a mission in New Zealand in the aftermath of a magnitude 6.3 earthquake that devastated the city of Christchurch on Tuesday. The 22-member team, which was assembled by the National Fire Agency, said they had followed Wellington’s instructions and searched 350 buildings in 21 districts, but did not find anyone trapped in the rubble or locate any dead bodies. The team members said their experience in New Zealand could be of help in undertaking future earthquake relief operations at home. A female Taiwanese student was among a number of foreign nationals who were reportedly trapped under the collapsed Canterbury TV building. So far, she has not been located.
HEALTH
Presbyopia a concern: poll
Middle-aged people are more worried about developing early presbyopia, or failing eyesight, than growing gray hair or developing wrinkles, a recent survey showed. Thirty percent of respondents — outpatients aged 35 to 54 who visited a local hospital for consultation on their deteriorating vision — said they experienced anxiety, depression, headaches and insomnia when their eyesight began to fail. Many expressed concern that wearing glasses would affect their appearance and make them look older, said Tom Yang (楊聰財), a psychiatrist at Cardinal Tien Hospital, which released the survey of 200 respondents. Some simply refused to wear glasses and 50 percent of the respondents said they also gave up reading, Yang said. Many ophthalmology outpatients also consulted psychiatrists as they were oversensitive about their health and very worried about showing the symptoms of premature aging, Yang said.
CULTURE
Bands warm up for Megaport
Two warm-up concerts for Kaohsiung’s biggest music festival, featuring dozens of underground bands, rocked fans both in the north and south of the country yesterday. The prelude shows to the Megaport Music Festival took place at Taipei’s Wall Live House and at the Wall Pier 2 in Kaohsiung. A total of 42 independent bands or artists from home and abroad, including British band 65daysofstatic and MUCC from Japan, will perform at the two-day festival that begins today. Wu Bai (伍佰) and China Blue are scheduled to perform in the final session tomorrow to close the event.
HEALTH
Donations pour in
A flood of donations has poured into various funds for people who cannot pay their National Health Insurance premiums, in the wake of last month’s charity auction by former Department of Health minister Yaung Chih-liang (楊志良), said Lai Li-wen (賴立文), a senior specialist at the Bureau of National Health Insurance (BNHI). From Feb. 13 to Feb. 19 — the week after Yaung’s briefcase was auctioned for NT$5 million (US$168,900) — the funds received 71 donations totaling NT$886,000, Lai said. The amount was seven times the weekly average of NT$110,000 recorded in January, Lai said. Before leaving office last month, Yaung put his five-year-old briefcase up for a charity auction on the Taiwan Yahoo Web site, where it was snapped up by Hon Hai Group chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘). Yaung donated all the proceeds from the sale, plus an additional NT$500,000 out of his own pocket, to the funds set up by the BNHI to help the disadvantaged pay their health insurance premiums.
SPORTS
Kevin Lin to run Silk Road
Kevin Lin (林義傑), a renowned Taiwanese ultra-marathon runner, announced that he would begin a “Running the Silk Road” adventure next month with the aim of increasing public awareness of the shortage of water resources. Lin said he and three colleagues would start the challenge in Istanbul, Turkey, late next month and finish in Xian in China’s Shaanxi Province in mid-September. “Running the Silk Road” will be a non-profit event with proceeds going to non-governmental organizations that help alleviate water shortages in communities along the old Silk Road. Lin ran through the Sahara Desert in 2007 for a similar cause. Lin will team up with Bai Bin (白斌) and Chen Jun (陳軍) from China, and Jodi Bloomer of Canada, to run the 10,000km, 150-day route that will pass through Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan — places that Lin said are all facing acute water shortages. It will be the first time that Chinese and Taiwanese athletes are jointly involved in such an endeavor.
ENTERTAINMENT
Sirena Huang to perform
Noted Taiwanese-American violinist Sirena Huang will give a violin recital on Tuesday at the National Concert Hall in Taipei. Huang, 16, has won several top prizes in several international competitions, most recently first prize in the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in 2009. She currently studies under Stephen Clapp and Sylvia Rosenberg at the Juilliard School in New York. Huang has been selected three times since 2003 as the youngest of 10 Exceptional Young Artists worldwide at the Starling-DeLay Symposium for Violin Study at Juilliard and has performed for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Dalai Lama and former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel.
ENTERTAINMENT
Yang launches new firm
Taiwanese entertainment guru Yang Teng-kui (楊登魁) launched a new production company yesterday to help revive the Taiwanese film industry. The company, Polyface Entertainment Media, plans to invest NT$3 billion (US$102 million) to produce films and television dramas; the largest investment in film and television entertainment in recent history. His firm is already scheduled to produce films with several directors who said that their cooperation will be long term. The company also has a branch office in Shanghai.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
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
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
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400