DIPLOMACY
Delegation visits Japan
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will lead a delegation to Japan today to meet politicians and visit an area of the country that was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in March last year, the party said yesterday. The 10--member delegation will pay a visit to Sendai City, a port city in northeastern Japan that was the closest major city to the epicenter of the March 11 quake, to express its support for reconstruction projects in the disaster area, said Lin Yu-chang (林右昌), the DPP’s spokesman and head of the delegation. On Thursday, Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko thanked Taiwan for its assistance following the disasters that battered Japan last year. Akihito and his wife personally expressed Japan’s gratitude to Taiwanese representative to Japan John Feng (馮寄台), who was invited to attend an imperial spring garden party with his wife.
SOCIETY
Taiwanese inventors shine
Taiwan shone brightly at one of the world’s most prestigious invention shows in Geneva, Switzerland, this year, winning eight special prizes, two more than in the previous year, and 45 gold medals, three more than last year. The 40th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva, where Taiwanese inventors also gained 52 silver and 25 bronze medals, is being held from Wednesday to today. Among the eight Taiwanese inventions that won the special prizes, three were awarded by an 85-member international jury for their energy-saving and energy-recycling features. The three designs were lamps and fans that can generate their own power, an automated household security lighting system that requires only 19 Watts of power but produces the equivalent of 40 Watts, and a wind generator that needs only a breeze to produce power.
CRIME
Ex-pastor faces sentence
A former church minister was indicted by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday for the 1991 killing of a man he suspected of having an affair with his wife. Samuel Chi (紀福讚), the ex-pastor of the Evangelical Formosan Church in California, suspected a deacon in his congregation surnamed Yu (余) was having an affair with his wife and with other women in the congregation. During a heated argument, Chi killed Yu with a hatchet on July 3, 1991. He later called the police and confessed to the murder. Chi was repatriated to Taiwan in June last year after serving 19 years and four months in a California prison. According to prosecutors, Taiwan’s Criminal Code stipulates that if a national commits a crime overseas that results in a sentence of more than three years, the person must face the law after serving their time overseas.
SECURITY
Coast guard watches Taiping
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said it is closely monitoring all foreign vessels near the waters of Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island (太平島) in the South China Sea. The CGA, the Maritime Patrol Directorate General and the Southern Coastal Patrol Office all said they would monitor any foreign ship entering Taiwan’s territorial water, but declined to elaborate, calling it a matter of national security. The remarks were in response to a report in the latest edition of the Chinese-language China Times Weekly on Friday that said Vietnamese armed patrol ships twice last month entered the restricted waters near Taiping Island. The island is the largest of the Nansha Islands, or Spratly Islands.
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