WEATHER
Snow falls on Yushan
The nation’s highest peak, Yushan (玉山), yesterday received its first snowfall this winter, with the arrival of northeasterly winds which brought abundant moisture, the Central Weather Bureau said. The temperature on Yushan dropped to about 0°C yesterday morning, before rain and snow began to fall at 11:25am, followed by sleet and more snow at noon, the bureau said.
TRANSPORT
New Year schedule unveiled
The Taipei MRT system is to run continuously for 42 hours from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1 to provide a travel option for people celebrating the New Year, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said on Thursday. The MRT is to start operating at 6am on New Year’s Eve and continue until midnight on New Year’s Day, with the exception of Xiaobitan and Xinbeitou MRT stations, the company said. In addition, from 5pm on Dec. 31, all trains running on the Red Line from Tamsui and Beitou are to continue to Xiangshan MRT Station, as it is a popular spot for viewing the Taipei 101 New Year fireworks. Bicycles are to be allowed on the MRT from 10am to 4pm on Dec. 31, while YouBike bicycle rental services are to be suspended in control areas near Taipei City Hall after 5pm, the company said. Services on the Maokong Gondola are also to be extended for New Year’s Eve, with the last carriage departing at 2am on Jan. 1.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Pan video goes viral
A video of Pingtung County Commissioner Pan Men-an (潘孟安) eating a banana taken from a bunch of bananas taped to a wall with duct tape has gone viral on social media. The Democratic Progressive Party politician was copying a similar stunt that swept international media last week, when David Datuna ate a banana displayed at Miami’s Art Basel that had just been sold by Perrotin, an international art gallery, for US$120,000. In the video the commissioner said that his bunch of bananas grown in Pingtung was bigger and more impressive than the Miami version, and that it was also a valuable piece of art. Pan took a banana from the bunch and ate it, saying: “Not only can they be admired [as a work of art], they are also delicious.” The video posted on Thursday had garnered more than 500 comments and been shared by more than 600 users on Facebook.
EMPLOYMENT
China’s allure waning
China remained the No. 1 destination for Taiwanese heading overseas to work last year, although the number dropped to its lowest level since 2008, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said. Last year, 404,000 Taiwanese were working in China (including Hong Kong and Macau), accounting for 54.9 percent of all Taiwanese working overseas, government data showed. The number is the lowest since 2008 and marks the fifth consecutive annual fall, the agency said. The previous year, 405,000 Taiwanese were working in China. The agency attributed the continued decline to the US-China trade dispute, which compelled many Taiwanese firms based in China to return to avoid punitive US tariffs. The cost of running a business in China has significantly increased over the past several years due to gradual salary increases and stricter environmental protection laws, the agency said. Overall, 737,000 Taiwanese were working overseas last year, an increase of 1,000 from the previous year, it said. The second-largest destination was Southeast Asian nations (112,000, or 15.2 percent), followed by the US (95,000, or 12.9 percent), it added.
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:
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
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