■ Health
Students at risk of suicide
Ten percent of Taiwanese university students have attempted suicide due to pressure in life and in school, a survey showed yesterday. According to the poll of 3,594 university students by the Taiwan Association of Clinical Psychiatrists, 367 students -- or 10.21 percent -- have attempted suicide in the past year. Among medical students the number of attempted suicides over the past year was around 14 percent, compared with 7.7 percent among students in engineering. The poll showed that 5.33 per cent of those questioned suffer from severe depression. They tend to be cynical, have a low opinion of themselves and have problems with interpersonal relationships. Taiwan has one of the highest suicides rates in Asia. Last year 3,468 Taiwanese killed themselves, averaging about 10 suicides per day, at a rate of 15.31 suicides per every 100,000 people.
■ Society
Folk fest features robots
Several robots are being displayed at a special pavilion at the ongoing 2005 Ilan Children's Folklore and Folkgame Festival, organizers said Saturday. Robots that can do push-ups, sommersaults, or even hip-hop dances are just some of the interesting things that await visitors to the pavilion. To give visitors a better understanding of robots, the pavilion has been divided into many educational sections dedicated to introducing facts regarding robots and the way robots are made, the organizers said. The festival is set to run through Aug. 14.
■ Biology
People want to make love
As Lover's Day approaches next week, a survey released yesterrday said that most young lovers in Taiwan would -- unsurprisingly -- like to celebrate the day by making love. In an online poll, the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC) asked young people what they most wanted to do on Lovers' Day, which falls on Aug. 11 this year. The poll gave four choices: a romantic dinner, a walk, making love, or all three. Among the 504 respondents, 7 percent wanted a romantic dinner with their lovers, 15 percent opted for a walk, 44 percent wanted to make love and 33 per cent wanted to do all three.
■ Diplomacy
Pacheco to visit
Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco de la Espriella, at the head of a 14-member delegation, is scheduled to arrive in Taiwan Aug. 12 for a six-day state visit, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). At the invitation of the ROC government, Pacheco will attend the inauguration of the Democratic Pacific Union initiated by Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), and sign a joint comunique with President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁). Pacheco first visited Taiwan in October 2002 to participate in the ROC's national day celebrations in his capacity as the Costa Rican president. He visited again in August 2003 to attend the summit of heads of state of the ROC and its Central American allies. Pacheco's August visit will be his third to Taiwan, which reflects the cordial relations between the two countries, a MOFA official said. Pacheco's delegation will include Costa Rican Foreign Minister Roberto Tovar, Minister of Foreign Trade Manual Gonzalez and several members of the Legislative Assembly.
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