DEFENSE
Air raid drill tomorrow
An annual air raid drill is to be held in seven cities and counties in northern Taiwan tomorrow, the National Police Agency said yesterday. The Wanan drill is to be held in Taipei, New Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan and Hsinchu cities and Yilan and Hsinchu counties between 1:30pm and 2pm. The agency said that during that time, those who are at home should shut their doors and windows and turn off the electricity and natural gas lines. People who work outdoors should follow instructions on entering public shelters, while vehicles should pull over and wait at the roadside, it said. The High Speed Rail and Taiwan Railways services will operate normally, but passengers who get off trains during the half-hour period should remain at the station until the all-clear signal is given, the agency said. There will also be controls at freeway entrances, with vehicles allowed to exit, but not allowed on freeways during the drill, it added.
HEALTH
Blood donations urged
The Taipei Blood Center is calling for emergency blood donations as its blood bank is suffering from a shortage of blood, with only about 6,700 bags left in its stocks on Friday. It said that while an average of 1,800 bags are used every day, the remaining amount can be kept for only about 38 days before being discarded, and the usual quantity of stored blood bags needed is between 10,000 and 15,000 bags. The center said it saw a decline in donations due to rain in northern Taiwan, adding that its stocks of blood type A would run out in three days, type B in about four days and type O in three days, as of yesterday. It urged people to donate blood at donation sites located near their homes, adding that the locations of donation centers can be found on the center’s Web site www.blood.org.tw. The center said people can dial (02) 2897-1600 for inquiries.
ENVIRONMENT
Millenia-old tree found
A Taiwanese cypress tree estimated to be more than 2,500 years old has been discovered in the southern part of the Central Mountain Range, forestry officials said on Friday. The tree, with a diameter of 5.2m and a circumference of 16.3m, would be ranked among the 10 oldest Taiwanese cypress trees in the nation once it has been officially registered, officials from the Forestry Bureau’s Taitung Forest District Office said. They said the discovery was made last month during an 11-day patrol in a forest near Daguei Lake (大鬼湖) and Siao-guei Lake (小鬼湖), in an area where the borders of Taitung and Pingtung counties and Kaohsiung meet. A Taiwania tree with a diameter of 3.8m was also discovered during the same patrol, the officials said.
CHARITY
Donation made to BBA
Taiwan has donated US$45,000 to the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA, “Save Childhood Movement”) to continue its support for the India-based non-governmental organization’s care for children rescued from human trafficking or forced labor. Representative to India James Tien (田中光) on Tuesday presented the donation to BBA chief executive Dhananjay Tingal on behalf of the government. The BBA was founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi in 1980 to end bonded labor, child labor and human trafficking and help rescued children with their rehabilitation and education. In January last year, when Satyarthi visited Taiwan, the nation donated US$50,000 to help the BBA carry out its care program.
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