SOCIETY
Hunting for food is legal
Aborigines can legally hunt to provide food for themselves and their families, according to an interpretation of the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法) published by the government yesterday. As long as wild animals are not caught for the purpose of making a profit, it is not illegal for Aborigines to hunt them, the Council of Agriculture and the Council of Indigenous Peoples said in their interpretation of the law. Wild animals may be caught as food for hunters and their families or for sharing with others, in accordance with traditional Aboriginal culture, the two agencies said. The interpretation was issued to address a dispute over whether hunting for self-consumption was permitted under Article 21-1 of the act.
HEALTH
Woman has encephalitis
Doctors confirmed that a 45-year-old Ukrainian woman working in Tainan has contracted Japanese encephalitis, the second such case this year, the Centers for Disease Control said yesterday. The woman initially experienced a severe headache and fever before losing consciousness and was hospitalized on May 30, the agency said, adding that she was confirmed as having contracted Japanese encephalitis on Wednesday. The agency said health officials have determined that the woman had not received related vaccinations and had not traveled overseas recently, adding that they identified her daily routine as traveling from her residence to her place of work in Danei District (大內), with occasional shopping trips to Yujing District (玉井).
WEATHER
Dry weather forecast
The nation is to enjoy dry, cloudy and hot weather until Sunday, with afternoon showers in mountainous areas in the north, the Central Weather Bureau forecast yesterday. However, from Monday the weather is to become unstable, the bureau said, forecasting that the instability will become more apparent the following day due to the arrival of a weather front and southwesterly winds. On Tuesday, showers or thundershowers, with occasional heavy rain, are to begin to hit, the bureau said, adding that the stationary front — a typical plum rain feature — would affect the nation for about five days. Yesterday, peak temperatures nationwide dropped slightly to between 31°C and 34°C thanks to a weak frontal system passing over the seas north of Taiwan, the agency said.
DIPLOMACY
President thanks Harris
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday expressed gratitude to Saint Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Timothy Harris for his long-standing and unwavering support of Taiwan in its efforts to attend the World Health Assembly (WHA) and other international organizations. In a meeting with a visiting Saint Kitts and Nevis delegation led by Harris, Tsai said that she hopes the nation will continue to support international participation that allows Taiwan to make greater contributions to the international community. Tsai said that Harris has visited Taiwan several times, including to attend her inauguration ceremony last year, and established good relations with officials. She thanked Harris for speaking in favor of Taiwan’s participation at the UN General Assembly in 2015 and last year, as well as Saint Kitts and Nevis’ support for Taiwan to attend this year’s WHA in Geneva, Switzerland, last month.
HEALTH
Food safety to be checked
Big food producers and registered importers of certain categories of food products are to soon be required to conduct regular food safety checks, according to a set of draft regulations published on Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration. Businesses are to also have to draw up a food safety monitoring plan and implement it, or risk a fine of NT$30,000 to NT$3 million (US$996.5 to US$99,651), the draft regulations state. The draft regulations are to be open to public review until Aug. 7, after which they will be finalized and put into effect, the agency said. The new regulations would apply to more than 20,000 businesses, including companies or factories that import agricultural plants, frozen, chilled, dehydrated and pickled mushrooms and algae, vegetable protein and its products, and processed soybean products, the agency said. Registered importers of baby foods and processed meat, dairy and fish products, as well as registered food producing and processing factories with a contributed capital of NT$30 million or more are to also be on the list, it said.
CHARITY
Rummage sale at TAS
The Taipei American School (TAS) Orphanage Club is to host its annual spring rummage sale — its 47th — tomorrow from 10am to 5pm. Club members have collected a wide variety of new and second-hand clothing, household items, shoes, toys, games, electronic items and appliances. The sale is to be held in the school’s forecourt and lobby come rain or shine. All of the proceeds go to the club’s funds for needy children and orphans in Taiwan and overseas. The school is at No. 800 Zhongshan N Rd Sec 6 in Tianmu (天母).
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