WEATHER
North faces heavy rain
Due to the passage of Tropical Storm Fung-Wong east of the country, heavy to extremely heavy rain is forecast for Keelung, Yilan County and the greater Taipei area, while other parts of the nation are likely to see cloudy skies, with intermittent showers in mountainous areas, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. As of 8am yesterday, the storm was 355km southeast of Yilan County, moving at 15kph in a north-northeasterly direction. Daytime temperatures nationwide yesterday were about 24°C to 26°C in the north, and 27°C to 30°C in the central and southern areas, the bureau said.
AVIATION
Gangwon eyes Taoyuan
New South Korean low-cost carrier Fly Gangwon on Wednesday announced that it would launch its first international route on Dec. 26 with a flight to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. The airline said it would offer a daily direct service between Taoyuan and its home base, Yangyang International Airport, using its sole 737-800 aircraft, which can carry 186 passengers. After its launch, two more destinations in Taiwan — Taichung and Kaohsiung — are to be added on Jan. 29 and March 29 respectively, it said. Fly Gangwon, which started its domestic service earlier this month, said it is aiming to expand into Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, with direct flights to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam; Bangkok; and the Philippines, over the next two years. The airline is scheduled to take delivery of another 737-800 next month and plans to expand its fleet to five next year, 10 by 2023 and 20 by 2025, it said. Yangyang, a small international airport in South Korea’s Gangwon Province, serves the nearby areas of Sokcho, Gangneung and Pyeongchang.
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