TOURISM
Visits to Japan top 1 million
The number of visits made by Taiwanese to Japan between January and last month has surpassed 1 million, the Japan National Tourism Organization said yesterday. Japan recorded 1.02 million visits from Taiwan, an increase of 49.4 percent from the same period of last year, the organization said. Depreciation of the Japanese yen and an increasing number of budget flights have helped Japan attract the highest number of foreign visitors in five years, it said. The organization said the number of visits made by foreign travelers increased by 22.8 percent from last year to 4.95 million, exceeding the previous record of 4.33 million in the first six months of 2008. Visitors from 10 countries, mostly in Southeast Asia, made up the bulk of the total, with travelers from Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia increasing by more than 50 percent, the organization said.
DIPLOMACY
French-speakers to visit
A group of 28 young adults from French-speaking countries will visit Taiwan next week to learn more about the local culture and increase mutual understanding, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Coming from countries such as France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Sao Tome and Principe, and Haiti. The young adults are scheduled to visit Taiwan from Sunday through Aug. 9 to attend the International Youth Taiwan Camp program and meet with their Taiwanese counterparts, ministry officials said. Themed “Discovering Taiwan,” this year’s program will see the participants visit the legislature, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Straits Exchange Foundation, it said, adding that also on the itinerary are opportunities to experience the traditional art of Taiwanese glove puppetry, as well as being a farmer for a day.
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