■ Society
Centenarians on the increase
Taiwan has 656 centenarians, with the oldest woman aged 119 and the oldest man aged 108, according to statistics compiled by the Ministry of the Interior and released yesterday. Their average age is 101.8. Last year, Taiwan had 638 centenarians, according to the statistics. The interior ministry will hold gala activities in honor of the centenarians on Senior Citizen's Day, which falls on Oct. 4 this year.
■ Health
DOH launches calcium drive
The Department of Health is to establish a committee to encourage citizens to take sufficient calcium, a health official said yesterday. He said that on average, Taiwan people get only 500mg of calcium per day, approximately 50 percent of the recommended daily intake. Calcium is important for bone health. The committee will run a program to drive home the importance of calcium and offer advice to help the public make sure they get enough of the mineral.
■ Transport
Railway a boon for travelers
The Taiwan High Speed Railway will greatly reduce the travel time between major cities and thus facilitate the formation of big commuter belts in western Taiwan, the Bureau of Taiwan High Speed Rail said yesterday. The Bureau said that once the high speed railway begins commercial operation in October 2005, it will take only 45 minutes to commute between Taipei and Taichung in central Taiwan, and less than 60 minutes to travel between Taichung and Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. The high speed railway will form the backbone of a mass rapid transportation network in western Taiwan, the bureau said.
■ People
Chu Mei-feng heads to school
Former politician Chu Mei-feng (璩美鳳), disgraced after she was filmed having sex with a married man, has applied to study for a PhD in industrial economics at China's prestigious Fudan University (復旦大學), state media said yesterday. Fudan University officials said in an interview with an evening newspaper in China that Chu's notorious reputation will not affect a decision on whether she will be accepted. "As long as she meets the requirements of Fudan University, we have no reason to refuse her," a university official was quoted by the newspaper as saying. Chu, known as Ju Meifeng in China, took a college entrance examination and is awaiting the results, which will not be released until the end of September, to see if she gets in, the report said.
■ Events
Film festival announced
The second Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival will be held in Taipei from Oct. 3 to Oct. 7, the chairwoman of the film festival announced. Hu Tai-li (胡台麗) said that the festival received more than 200 overseas films and nearly 100 local works this year, with 11 Taiwan films and 17 foreign works being selected for screening at a theater in downtown Taipei during the festival. In addition to films from Taiwan, films from China, France, the US, Australia, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Montenegro, Sweden, Finland, the UK and Japan will be screened during the festival. The theme of this year's festival is "Migration Story" which aims to focus on various experiences in migration, Hu said.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater