The rain brought by the start of the plum rain season last week has slightly eased drought conditions in the country, but the catchment levels of major reservoirs have not yet increased noticeably, the Water Resources Agency (WRA) said.
Until the catchment levels rise, the nation will continue to face the threat of drought, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday following a meeting of its disaster response unit earlier in the day.
The statement said the agency’s water resource monitoring indicators will remain unchanged from those it released on April 14, which show that water conditions in all areas of the nation are normal, except for the Banciao (板橋) and Sinjhuang (新莊) areas and Linkou District (林口) in New Taipei City, Taoyuan County and Greater Tainan.
The water status in Banciao, Sinjhuang, Linkou and Taoyuan was categorized as “slightly tight,” while Greater Tainan must continue with first-stage water rationing measures, meaning that water supplies during the night are reduced.
According to the agency’s data, from Saturday to Monday, rain brought by a weather front added about 9.82 million tonnes of water to the catchment of Shihmen Reservoir in northern Taiwan, 3.8 million tonnes of water to Wushantou and Zengwen reservoirs in the south, and 2.87 million tonnes of water to Nanhua Reservoir, also in the southern.
The agency estimated that Taoyuan, Linkou, Banciao, Sinjhuang, Chiayi and Greater Tainan will enjoy stable water supplies until May 31, while other areas will not have to worry about water shortages at least through next month.
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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