WEATHER
Storms likely until Thursday
The nation could see more unstable weather next week because of an approaching front and moisture from the west, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Rains and thunderstorms are likely in most parts of the country until about Thursday, when skies should begin to clear, forecasters said. Temperatures across the nation are expected to remain at their current level until Wednesday, when a passing weather front will bring down daily highs by between 3oC and 5oC, the bureau said. According to forecasters, temperatures will hover between 21oC and 29oC in northern Taiwan and between 22oC and 30oC in southern Taiwan until Wednesday.
TRANSPORTATION
More tilting train cars arrive
The second batch of tilting train cars arrived at Keelung Port on Friday and are scheduled to be put into service in the summer. The tilting train, also known as the Puyuma Express (普悠瑪), was purchased by the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) mainly for the east coast railway service. The first batch of 16 train cars had arrived last year, with eight of them commencing service during the Lunar New Year holiday this year. The TRA said the remaining eight train cars in the first batch are scheduled to start operations on Wednesday, adding that passengers can begin booking tickets for the train tomorrow. The second batch also consists of 16 train cars. The TRA has ordered a total of 136 new tilting train cars, for 17 train sets. The remaining 120 train cars are scheduled to be delivered by the end of this year.
DISASTER RELIEF
Aid to Sichuan delivered
The Red Cross Society of the Republic of China delivered large quantities of blankets, tents and other supplies yesterday to Taiwan’s main international gateway, from where they will be shipped in two batches over the next three days to China’s earthquake-stricken Sichuan Province. The supplies — 5,000 blankets and 500 tents able to accommodate up to six people each — were collected based on reports from the Red Cross Society in Sichuan that tents and blankets were the top priorities because adequate supplies of other materials, such as instant noodles and bottled water, had been secured, the group said. The supplies will be sent to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province today and on Tuesday. As of Friday, the Red Cross Society had also received NT$9.92 million (US$335,418) in donations for earthquake victims in the province despite not openly soliciting them, the organization reported.
AVIATION
Fighter jet goes to museum
A US-made fighter jet that was part of Taiwan’s air force fleet in the 1960s arrived at a military museum in Nampa, Idaho, on Friday to be added to the museum’s collection. The F-104A Starfighter, which was built in 1958, has become the latest addition to the Warhawk Air Museum. The aircraft was sent by the US to Taiwan in 1960 as part of a US military assistance program and was shipped to Jordan in 1969 after Taiwan obtained more advanced F-104 fighters, according to KTVB.com, an NBC-affiliated television station in Idaho. It was decommissioned in 1977 and returned to the US by a private company, and had been bought and sold several times since then, before the museum bought it this month. The plane was to go on display as soon as Warhawk Museum staff repainted it with its original United States Air Force markings, the report 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