■ Population
More male babies born
The proportion of male babies nationwide is rising as women increasingly abort female fetuses, the Department of Health said yesterday. Sociologists say couples are increasingly choosing to have only one child in order to enjoy a better quality of life and that having a son is preferable because males carry on the family name. Last year, 119,000 boys and 108,000 girls were born, boosting the ratio of males against females to about 110 to 100 from the normal rate of 105 to 100, the department said in a statement. It said more women were aborting female fetuses and giving birth only when they conceive boys. Technology allowing parents to find out the sex of their fetus, as well as artificial insemination allowing parents to choose the sex of their child, has contributed to the increase in the male-to-female ratio, sociologists say. The birthrate dropped to a record low of 1.2 last year. The rate, which measures the average number of times a woman gives birth during her lifetime, was 3.71 in 1971 and 7.04 in 1951.
■ Performing Arts
Music festival marks solstice
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) traveled to Chiayi County yesterday to join the Asian Music Festival dedicated to mark the summer solstice. Lu met with more than 500 foreign brides and their families during the festival in which bands, choirs and musicians from Indonesia, Japan, Iran, Mongolia and Taiwan showed off their talent. The Asian Music Festival, the first of its kind in Chiayi, has been going on since June 19 under the sponsorship of the Chiayi County Government as part of activities marking the upcoming opening of the Tropic of Cancer Solar Museum in Chiayi. The summer solstice, which fell on June 21, is the day the sun is furthest north of the equator. Chiayi County's Shuishang township is exactly where the Tropic of Cancer passes when the summer solstice occurs.
■ Aboriginal Affairs
Churches launch book drive
To help promote reading in remote Aboriginal commu-nities, three churches in Pingtung and Taitung counties are calling for the public to donate used children's and young-adult books. The book drive is spearheaded by Chen Yi-cheng (陳怡真), a teacher in Taitung's Chang-bin township and member of the Chang-bin Church. "In our church there are many people from the Aboriginal community or from low-income or single-family homes. I came to realize that there was a serious lack of reading materials for the kids," Chen said. She said that the idea for the drive really took off when friends used e-mail to spread her idea. Ku-lo Church and Man-chou Church in Pingtung County are centers for the book drive. To learn more, call Man-chou Church at (08) 880-1886 or Ku-lo Church at (08) 785-0431.
■ Policy
Chen firm on new constitution
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday reiterated his intention to provide the nation with a new constitution in the coming four years. Speaking at a meeting of the Tainan County Natives' Association in Taipei, Chen said that a suitable and feasible constitution will make Taiwan "a great, normal and beautiful country." Chen encouraged the association's members to continue to support his administration and to be confident in the nation's future development. Chen said many economic indicators show the economy has been steadily recovering and the country's international competitiveness has been increasing.
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