CUSTOMS
Egg rolls draw fine
A Taiwanese arriving at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport late on Thursday was fined NT$200,000 (US$6,440) for attempting to bring in food items containing pork, Taipei Customs officials said yesterday. The passenger, surnamed Hung (洪), was carrying pork floss egg rolls from Hong Kong, an area listed as high-risk for African swine fever, officials said. Visitors from African swine fever-affected and high-risk areas who attempt to bring pork products into the country are subject to a fine of NT$200,000 for first-time offenders, while repeat offenders face a fine of NT$1 million.
ENTERTAINMENT
‘Dear Ex’ Oscars-bound
A comedy-drama is to represent Taiwan at the 92nd Academy Awards, the Motion Picture and Drama Association said on Thursday. Dear Ex (誰先愛上他的) was submitted by the Ministry of Culture’s Bureau of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development for Best International Feature Film at next year’s Academy Awards, it said in a statement. The film released last year portrays the story of a teenager who navigates a bitter feud between his mother and the same-sex lover of his recently deceased father, who made the man his insurance beneficiary. The film was selected from 16 movies as it “reflects diverse issues in gender in a popular and humorous way, and portrays milestones and vitality in Taiwan’s contemporary equal rights movement,” the ministry said. The award ceremony is scheduled for Feb. 9.
EDUCATION
NTU jumps 50 places
National Taiwan University (NTU) jumped 50 places to No. 120 on Times Higher Education’s list of the world’s best universities, it said in a report on Wednesday. Published for the 16th year, the London-based magazine’s World University Rankings 2020 evaluated 1,396 universities from 92 nations and regions, making it the largest and most diverse such rankings to date. Performance was measured using 13 indicators in five main categories — teaching, research, citations, international outlook and industry income, which refers to a university’s ability to support industry with innovation. NTU was among 36 Taiwanese institutions in the report and saw the greatest improvement, with an overall score of 59.9 points. National Tsing Hua University and Taipei Medical University were in the 351-to-400 range. China Medical University, National Chiao Tung University, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and National Yang-Ming University were in the 501-to-600 range.
MILITARY
Bullet hits woman’s roof
The military yesterday extended a formal apology to Chang Lo Piao-mei (張羅漂妹), a Hsinchu County resident, after a bullet from a .50-caliber machine gun reportedly went astray during target practice, damaging her roof. No injuries were reported. The 6th Army Corps said that its 33 Chemical Warfare Group was conducting target practice at a military training camp in Guansi Township (關西) on Thursday. Group Commander Colonel Lee Yu-sen (李煜森) said that the bullet veered 2km from its target and punched a hole through the roof of the building. A .50-caliber bullet has a range of 1km to 2km, Lee said, adding that the bullet likely ricocheted off a rock or other hard object. Chang, 92, said she went to her living room after hearing a loud thump to find a bullet lying on the floor and a hole in her roof. Lee said the military immediately apologized after learning about the incident and vowed to help with repairs.
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