EARTHQUAKE
Taitung County jolted
Two moderate earthquakes jolted Taitung County early yesterday, but there were no reports of casualties or damage, the Central Weather Bureau said. The first magnitude 4.5 quake hit at 3:24am, the Seismology Center said. The quake’s epicenter was 34km northwest of the Taitung County government building in Haituan Township (海端) at a depth of 3.4km, it said. The quake was felt the strongest in Lidao Township (利稻) in Taitung and Taoyuan Township in Greater Kaohsiung. Then at 6:01am, a magnitude 3.5 quake shook Taitung County again. The epicenter was 35.5km northwest of the Taitung County government building at a depth of 5.5 km. The center said the second quake was an aftershock and caused only mild tremors in Taitung’s Chulu Township (初鹿), Greater Kaohsiung’s Taoyuan and Pingtung County’s Sandimen (三地門).
NATIONAL DEFENSE
New aircraft arrival
The military said on Sunday that it would take delivery of four marine patrol aircraft purchased from the US by the end of this year, which will bolster its anti-submarine capabilities. The four P-3Cs are the first of 12 to be delivered by the end of 2015. The 12 aircraft and associated equipment and services, worth US$1.96 billion, are part of an arms deal valued at US$2.23 billion announced by the US in 2007. A new facility has been built in Pingtung County for repair and maintenance of the P-3Cs. The current 26 S-2T marine patrol aircraft, which were purchased in 1986, can stay operational for four hours, compared with the P-3C’s 12 hours. The P-3C has a range of 2,800 nautical miles (5,185km) compared with the S-2T’s 450 nautical miles.
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