■ Society
Foreigners must prove worth
Foreigners applying for Taiwanese citizenship will be required to have basic Chinese-language skills and common knowledge of Taiwan's citizens' rights and obligations, the Executive Yuan announced yesterday. "The measure seeks to help foreign spouses better adapt to local life and environment after they get married to Taiwanese nationals and elevate their ability to educate their children," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) told the press conference held after the weekly closed-door Cabinet meeting yesterday morning. Statistics made available by the Ministry of the Interior showed that there are 287,059 foreign and Chinese spouses married to Taiwanese nationals as of August.
■ Education
Aborigines get training
More Aboriginal students will be selected to receive government-funded athletic training when the second phase of a Ministry of Education (MOE) training plan begins shortly, an MOE official said yesterday. In the second phase of the plan, the MOE will open four more categories -- gymnastics, taekwando, weightlifting and judo -- to allow indigenous students who have shown talent in athletic ability to receive professional training, said Wang Fu-lin (王福林), director of the MOE's Department of Physical Education. According to Wang, during the first phase of the plan, which began in 1989, some 300 Aboriginal students were selected to receive professional athletic training focusing on track-and-field.
■ Health
Poor children get vaccines
Children from low-income households are set to receive free flu vaccinations, the Center for Disease Control deputy director Su Ih-jen (蘇益仁) announced yesterday afternoon. The decision comes after the confirmation of a variant strain of the type A Fujian virus strain on Monday. According to CDC officials, the Fujian virus strain had led to the deaths of several children in the US and Europe even though the flu generally affects the elderly most seriously. Su said that 2,000 vaccinations will be given to children under the age of two from low-income households. He said that the CDC would set aside vaccinations for children next year. The CDC is providing those over the age of 55 with free flu vaccinations.
■ Education
Teacher in vagina shocker
An instructor teaching nursing to first-year students at the Taipei First Girls' Senior High School has been criticized for asking students to draw their own vaginas. The Humanistic Education Foundation criticized the teacher for violating students' privacy after receiving complaints from some parents. Last month, the teacher asked her students to draw their own vaginas and hand in the drawing as homework. Some students complained to their mothers, who reported it to the Humanistic Education Foundation, but when foundation members visited the nursing teacher, she said that it was a good way for students to get to know their bodies and that the homework was voluntary. If a student refused the drawing assignment, it would not affect her grades. The school defended the unnamed teacher.
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
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
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