WEATHER
Temperatures to rise
Residents of northern Taiwan could see heavy rain along with cool weather this weekend, but the Central Weather Bureau expects temperatures to rise to 30oC next week. Due to increasing seasonal winds, the bureau predicted gusty winds in coastal areas in northern Taiwan, adding that precipitation could be most pronounced along the northern coast, in mountainous areas in greater Taipei and Yilan County in the northeast. Temperatures in northern Taiwan could remain at between 20oC and 25oC until tomorrow, when seasonal winds begin to weaken, it said. However, warmer and drier weather is in the forecast from Tuesday, and daytime highs could even hit 30oC across the country on Friday, the bureau said.
CONSUMER ISSUES
VW to recall 18,000 cars
Troubled German carmaker Volkswagen (VW) is to recall 18,000 cars in Taiwan in January as a result of a diesel emissions scandal, according to the carmaker’s Taiwan branch. In the wake of the emissions scandal, Germany’s federal motor transport authority has ordered a compulsory recall of all affected Volkswagen cars in the country, starting from Jan. 1. The carmaker’s Taiwan branch said it will try to follow its headquarter’s instructions by recalling the affected cars in Taiwan around the same time. The emissions scandal was exposed in September when the US. The Environmental Protection Agency found that emissions control software was being used on Volkswagen diesel cars to meet US environmental standards through defeat codes in their onboard computer systems to fool emissions-testing equipment. Europe’s biggest carmaker admitted cheating in emissions tests on about 11 million diesel vehicles.
HEALTH
Dengue abates in Tainan
The dengue fever outbreak has come under control in Tainan, where the disease has been concentrated since the start of May, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. As of Friday, Tainan had reported 81 new cases for this week, but that was 21 fewer than the figure it reported on the same day last week, the CDC said. The total number of confirmed cases there now stands at 21,688, out of a total of 29,052 cases nationwide, CDC data showed. However, the endemic continues unabated in Kaohsiung, where 227 new cases were reported as of Friday this week, an increase of 77 cases from the same day last week, according to the agency. The CDC added that 129 patients have died from the mosquito-borne disease across the nation, while 28 remain in intensive care and 26,693 have recovered.
TOURISM
Young dream of travel: poll
Young Taiwanese love traveling much more than their Asian counterparts, with 60 percent of them longing to quit their jobs to take long vacations, according to a recentsurvey conducted by Expedia, an online travel company. Expedia surveyed about 2,200 young travelers from Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, and most said that the best way to get away from the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life is to travel. Taiwan’s r young are more interested than the older generations in traveling abroad, the survey showed. As of last year, 40 percent out of 12 million travelers were young people aged between 20 and 40, Expedia said. However, while 60 percent of the Taiwanese respondents said that they were toying with the idea of quitting their jobs to take long vacations, few do so. Most young travelers instead spend between NT$15,000 and NT$30,000 (US$457 and US$915) for shorter getaways.
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: