ASTRONOMY
Moon approaching Earth
The full moon will be at its largest this year on Dec. 3, when it passes nearest to the Earth, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The celestial event will take place at 11:47pm that day, when the moon will be about 350,000km from Earth, the museum said, adding that it will appear about 14 percent bigger than the smallest full moon this year on June 9, when it passed the apogee — the point in its orbit at which it is furthest from the Earth. The difference resembles that between the size of a NT$50 coin and a NT$10 coin, the museum said. The museum said it will set up a high-power telescope at the Tianmu Baseball Stadium between 7pm and 9pm and the public is invited to come observe the phenomenon.
CRIME
Smuggled fish intercepted
A big shipment of yellow croakers was on Wednesday seized in Tainan, in the first case of fish smuggling discovered in southern Taiwan in four years, the Coast Guard Administration said yesterday. During a security check onboard a Taiwanese fishing boat at the Port of Anping, coast guards noticed that the captain was very nervous and decided to conduct a search, which uncovered 7.8 tonnes of yellow croakers, the coast guard said in a statement. The fish was packed on ice in plastic boxes on the boat, which had just returned to port after two days at sea, carrying eight crew members and fishing equipment that appeared unused, the coast guard said. During the search, the boat captain confessed that he had smuggled the fish into Taiwan after making a deal at sea with Chinese fishermen, the coast guard said, adding that the fish was seized and the case was turned over to the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office for further investigation.
CRIME
Logging suspects rounded up
Alleged members of an illegal logging ring made up of Taiwanese and foreigners were arrested by law enforcement officers on suspicions that they were poaching red cypress in mountainous areas of Nantou County, the Nantou Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Local police arrested four Taiwanese men and four unaccounted for Vietnamese workers in Renai Township (仁愛) for their alleged involvement in illegal logging during a series of raids conducted between Monday and Thursday. Along with the eight suspects, two pieces of red cypress, weighing 166kg, logging equipment and a jeep were also seized, the office said. The Taiwanese men, surnamed Chen (陳), Kao (高), Tseng (曾) and Fan (范), hired the Vietnamese nationals, paying them NT$20,000 per trip to cut down trees, particularly red cypress, on the township’s Mapu Mountain and transport them, an initial investigation found. The Taiwanese suspects were each released on bail of NT$20,000, while the four Vietnamese were kept in custody because they are considered a flight risk, prosecutors said.
SOCIETY
Thai worker’s death probed
Prosecutors in Taoyuan are investigating the death of a Thai migrant worker who was found dead in his apartment on Wednesday morning with knife wounds on his neck. Accompanied by forensic experts, prosecutors went to the scene of the death in the city’s Gueishan District (龜山) on Wednesday afternoon. They found a fruit knife near the body of the 32-year-old man, the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office said. The initial investigation found no evidence of foul play, the office said, adding that prosecutors and police are not ruling out suicide.
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