MUSIC
Bands to rock the world
Reggae-rock band Matzka and eight other bands are set to rock stages across the world with the backing of the Ministry of Culture. Matzka, Taiwanese-Canadian rock band io and electronic band Red are set to perform at Canadian Music Week next month, according to the ministry. Later in the month, rapper MC HotDog and rock bands Quarterback and The 13 Band will perform in Singapore at the Music Matters festival. Rock bands Monkey Pilot, My Skin Against Your Skin and Red-Flower are also slated to play at the Java Rockin’land festival in Indonesia later this year, the ministry said. Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) said bands were an easier way to reach out to young people than films and performing arts, adding that she believes the musicians will help people abroad learn more about Taiwan.
SOCIETY
Koala cubs to debut
Three newborn koalas are expected to debut at the Taipei Zoo three months from now after they were discovered in their mothers’ pouches, zoo officials said on Monday. Zookeepers found the joeys during an examination of the three female koalas on April 14, 35 days after they mated. The gestation period for koalas is between 34 and 36 days, after which newborn joeys find their way into their mothers’ pouches, where they nurse for up to six months. Zoo personnel helped the koalas mate early last month after seeing them climb down from trees and walk backward, which are signs they are in heat. While the happy news is likely to draw more crowds, officials asked the public to keep the noise down when visiting the koala enclosure, so as not to disturb the mothers tending to their joeys. The zoo currently has 13 koalas.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
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
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
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: