CRIME
Murder probe completed
Japanese police have officially closed the case of the January murder of two Taiwanese students after confirming a Taiwanese man as the killer, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Lin Chih-ying (林芷瀅) and Julia Chu (朱立婕), students at a Japanese language school in Tokyo, were found covered in blood in their dormitory on Jan. 5. One was found dead at the scene of the crime, while the other was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital. Japanese police last month confirmed that Chang Chih-yang (張志揚), also a student at the language school, was the killer, said Huang Ming-lung (黃明朗), secretary-general of the ministry’s Association of East Asian Relations. Chang slashed himself with a knife and bled to death on Jan. 9 while in police custody.
ENVIRONMENT
Kaohsiung signs eco-accord
The Greater Kaohsiung Government has agreed to collaborate with a leading international NGO environmental group to establish a training center on sustainability for the group’s East Asian members. Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) yesterday signed the agreement with Gino van Begin, deputy secretary-general of the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives. The German-based council, dedicated to reducing carbon emissions, has about 1,200 members in more than 70 countries. Kaohsiung joined the organization in 2006. Gino said the facility would help East Asian members improve their ability to adapt to climate change and other problems, including biodiversity and water resource management. Greater Kaohsiung will work hard to be a model city of sustainability in Southeast Asia, as well as an important platform and council partner in Asia, Chen said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Taiwanese film wins prize
The Taiwanese box-office hit You are the Apple of My Eye (那些年,我們ㄧ起追的女孩) won in a new category introduced this year at the 31st Hong Kong Film Awards, taking the title of “Best Film of Mainland [China] and Taiwan.” The low-budget film is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by popular Taiwanese author Giddens Ko (柯景騰). It beat four other Taiwanese and Chinese blockbusters — The Flowers of War (金陵十 三釵), If You Are the One 2 (非誠勿擾2), Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (賽德克巴萊) and Starry Starry Night (星空) — to win the award. Lead actors Ko Chen-tung (柯震東) and Michelle Chen (陳妍希) attended the ceremony at the Hong Kong Cultural Center.
TRANSPORT
New records for MRT, trains
Railway and mass rapid transit (MRT) ridership and revenues hit record highs in the first two months of the year, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said on Sunday. Statistics showed that total ridership for the high-speed rail, the regular railway and the MRT systems in Taipei and Greater Kaohsiung reached 147.96 million in January and February, up 7.4 percent from a year earlier. The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) and Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp had average daily ridership of 594,000 and 122,000, up 5.5 percent and 9.5 percent respectively, from a year earlier. The Taipei MRT saw ridership rise 6.9 percent to 95.13 million, while the Kaohsiung MRT posted a 10.6 percent increase to 9.54 million. Revenues also rose significantly. The TRA’s January to February revenue rose to a 10-year high of NT$2.7 billion (US$91.47 million). The Taipei MRT had revenue of NT$2.06 billion in the first two months, while the Kaohsiung MRT had revenue of NT$240 million.
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