WEATHER
North cools due to monsoon
Temperatures yesterday fell in parts of northern Taiwan, influenced by the northeast monsoon, and the cool and wet weather is expected to last until tomorrow, the Central Weather Bureau said. In New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水), the temperature dipped to 19.1℃ early in the morning and it fell to 18.7℃ in the northern port city of Keelung, the Central Weather Bureau said. The 2℃ to 3℃ drop in temperatures in the north was due to stronger winds and increasing moisture brought by the northeast monsoon, it added. The cool and wet weather is to last through today in northern and eastern areas, it said. The damp weather is expected to lift on Thursday, with clear and sunny skies to emerge again on Friday, the bureau forecast. However, daytime and nighttime temperatures might differ steeply due to a radiative cooling effect.
ZOOLOGY
Koalas nursing newborns
The Taipei Zoo yesterday urged visitors to keep their voices down when touring the koala enclosure, as two koalas are each nursing their own joeys. Early last month, veterinarians at the zoo found a joey each in the pouches of seven-year-old Empress and three-year-old Nicole, the statement said. From their appearances, the two mothers show no signs of holding their babies, because the newborns have not yet grown large enough to venture outside their pouches and are the size of a NT$10 coin, the zoo said. The joeys are not expected to stretch their heads out of the pouches and begin trying to eat eucalyptus leaves until they are six to seven months old, the zoo said. There are a total of 13 koalas (seven female and six male) in the zoo, not including the two newborns.
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