Former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, the winner of the first Tang Prize in Sustainable Development, and four other Tang Prize winners are to visit Taiwan next month to receive the awards.
Brundtland, known as the “godmother of sustainable development,” and the four others will attend the award ceremony in Taipei on Sept. 18 and other events from Sept. 15 to Sept. 21, the Tang Prize Foundation said yesterday.
The prizes were awarded in June to people who have made major contributions in four fields: sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, Sinology and rule of law.
Established in 2012 by Taiwanese entrepreneur Samuel Yin (尹衍樑), the Tang Prize aims to honor leaders in fields that it deems critical in the 21st century.
James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan shared the prize in biopharmaceutical science; Chinese American historian Yu Ying-shih (余英時) won the prize in Sinology; and former South African Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs was named the winner of the prize in rule of law.
The winners will receive or share a cash prize of NT$40 million (US$1.33 million) in each category and a research grant of up to NT$10 million to be used within five years.
The award ceremony is to take place at the National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei.
On Sept. 19, the winners will speak at an event at the Taipei International Convention Center that will be attended by professionals, researchers and students, the foundation said, adding that they will also participate in forums around the nation.
Brundtland is to speak at National Sun Yat-sen University in Greater Kaohsiung on Sept. 17; Yu is to join a forum at Academia Sinica in Taipei on Sept. 20; Sachs is to give a talk at National Chung Hsing University in Greater Taichung on Sept. 20; and Allison and Honjo will speak at National Cheng Kung University in Greater Tainan on Sept. 21.
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:
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
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