■ Culture
Women want to be `bad'
Seventy percent of young women in Taiwan want to be "new bad women," a term referring to liberated, self-centred and independent women, a poll showed yesterday. The Internet survey by the monthly magazine Smart showed that 42 percent of the 6,000 respondents consider themselves "new bad women" and 29 percent want to be "new bad women." When asked what is most important to "new bad women," 50 percent said career, 32 percent money, 28 percent independence. The poll showed that "new bad women" want not only to be financially independent, but also independent in relationships with men. Some 77 percent said women must be "loved and feared" by men. On the subject of love-making, 42 percent said what they care about most is their partners holding them after love-making, and 28 percent care most about foreplay. The poll is entitled "Do You Want To Be A New Bad Woman?" Its definition of "new bad woman" is: "Unlike the traditional good woman, the `new bad woman' wants to control her own life, make money, pursue high-quality lifestyle, independent financially and in relationships with men."
■ Health
Warning given on incense
The Consumers' Foundation has warned people not to burn incense sticks in airtight rooms because toxic smoke from burning jossticks can cause cancer, a Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday. The warning was made after the foundation tested 13 kinds of incense sticks and found cancer-causing toxins in 12 of them, the paper said. Butadiene and benzene ranging in amounts from 2.3 to 7.84 parts per million were found after burning the jossticks for two minutes in airtight rooms. Butadiene can cause lymphatic cancer and blood cancer. Benzene can cause harm to eyes, skin, the respiratory system, the central nervous system, liver and kidneys and can cause ataxia and depression, the foundation said.
■ Press freedom
Austrians side with Taiwan
The Austrian Journalists Club decided on Wednesday to join its counterpart in Taiwan in protesting against the UN for violating the universal value of freedom of the press by denying Taiwanese journalists passes to cover the annual conference of the World Health Assembly (WHA), which is being held in Geneva from May 16-25. The Austrian Journalists Club said in a press release that Taiwanese journalists were barred from covering the annual conference of the WHA, the decision-making arm of the World Health Organization, last year on the grounds that Taiwan is not a country recognized by the UN.
■ Politics
CPP expels member
The Chinese People's Party (CPP) expelled one of its members elected to the National Assembly and then filled the vacancy with the person next in line. Bowing to a public outcry, the party yesterday disqualified Yueh Meng-hsi (樂夢溪) and reprimanded her husband Chu Chih-peng (朱志鵬). The couple is accused of fraudulently closing down the drycleaning shop they jointly ran. Yueh's position will be filled by Pan Bi-yueh (潘碧月). Another of the party's members in the National Assembly, Chen Yuan-chi (陳源奇), received an admonishment for "repeatedly making inappropriate remarks" about the couple's case. The CPP received 1.08 percent of the total votes in the National Assembly elections, tailing behind the alliance led by political science professor Chang Ya-chung (張亞中).
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