AVIATION
Bomb hoax grounds flight
A China Airlines flight with 251 passengers on board was delayed by nearly an hour yesterday because of a bomb threat, the country’s largest carrier said. The A330 plane bound for Jakarta was cleared for departure after the Aviation Police Office checked passengers and their luggage and found no explosives, the company said, adding the suspect had specifically mentioned the flight destined for the Indonesian capital. “We followed all the necessary procedures to make sure the plane was safe before departure,” company spokesman Hamilton Liu (劉國芊) said. The plane took off at 2:35pm after a 45-minute delay, Liu added. According to the airline, the suspect used to be a member of its Dynasty Flyer program and had repeatedly made bomb threats to the company over the past few days. The suspect was taken into custody and faces a jail sentence of up to three years or a fine of up to NT$1 million (US$33,700) under the Civil Aviation Act (民用航空法), police said.
SCIENCE
Lunar eclipse on Monday
Astronomy buffs will be treated to a partial lunar eclipse on Monday, weather permitting, when more than 30 percent of the moon’s surface is expected to be covered, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said yesterday. The eclipse will have started by the time the moon rises at 6:35pm that day, the museum said, adding that the phenomenon in the eastern sky will end by 8:07pm. “Hopefully the partial lunar eclipse will be a consolation for those who missed a total lunar eclipse last year,” museum staff said, referring to December’s eclipse that was covered up by heavy clouds. The next partial lunar eclipse will take place on April 26 next year, the museum said.
DIPLOMACY
Students begin exchanges
Three hundred students will travel to more than 30 countries this summer to promote cultural exchanges and enhance bilateral ties in what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs described yesterday as the largest youth ambassador program since it was launched in 2009. The program encourages young people to take part in diplomacy and present different facets of Taiwan to host countries, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Simon Ko (柯森耀) said at a flag presentation ceremony held before their departure. A total of 301 students from 25 universities and colleges nationwide were selected to visit 21 diplomatic allies and 17 other countries without official ties with Taipei, such as Argentina, Brazil, Israel and Germany.
DIPLOMACY
Australian office renamed
The Australian Commerce and Industry Office Taipei (ACIO) has renamed itself the Australian Office Taipei to better reflect its functions, Australian Representative Kevin Magee said on Monday. “In 2012, the time has come to change our name to something that better reflects our work,” Magee was quoted as telling senior government officials and cultural and business leaders in a statement. The ACIO was established in 1981 to serve as Canberra’s de facto representative office in Taiwan. At Monday’s event, calligrapher Ho Chuan-hsin (何傳馨) wrote the five Chinese characters for “Australian Office,” the office said. “When it became time to look for a new symbol and logo for our renamed office, which serves as a bridge between Australia and Taiwan and Australian and Chinese culture, it was natural we thought of featuring calligraphy as the center point and heart of our new image and public face,” Magee said.
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