Former US president Bill Clinton evoked both scorn and praise with his comment, "I feel your pain."
Former Taiwanese minister of justice Liao Cheng-hao (
Now director of the Tosun Public Interest Foundation, a non-government organization (NGO) devoted to children's issues, Liao yesterday announced the results of a questionnare survey on "growing pains" -- and a lot of kids are not happy.
Calling it "the index of pain," foundation representatives claimed the survey quantified the anguish of middle and high school students nationwide.
"If [a child's] score exceeds 60 points, that indicates that the participant is in pain," said foundation representative Bill Hsu (許福生).
Each survey response in five categories -- including home, school, society, future prospects and politics -- was assigned a number score, with scores exceeding 60 points per questionnare indicating an individual's discontent with regard to most, if not all, of the categories, a foundation press release said.
Although similar to "romantic compatibility tests" in magazines for teenage girls, the foundation's index of adolescent angst was painstakingly boiled down from 2,845 questionnares, and was an accurate indicator of the overall emotional health of children, foundation representatives said.
The press conference to announce the index yesterday at the Youth Activity Center in Taipei was an uneasy mix of former and current politicians, prosecutors, judges and Buddhist monks. Among them were High Court Judge Gau Fehng-shian (高鳳仙) and People First Party (PFP) Secretary-General Chin Chin-sheng (秦金生).
They mingled and ate cookies while a polka jazz band played "umpa-umpa" jazz in between periodic, ear-splitting squeals of microphone feeback.
According to Hsu, students are generally depressed about their academic and vocational prospects, as well as society in general and "government actions," or performance, Hsu told the audience.
The average scores for these three categories among survey participants were 62.2, 60.4 and 71, respectively, he said.
Although the overall scores for the remaining two categories, home and school, were also high at 50.4 and 52.2, respectively, they didn't indicate severe emotional pain as they were both below 60, Hsu's pain threshold.
"The good news is that levels of discontent for all five categories are at their lowest ever," Hsu said, referring to how this year's "index of pain" stacked up against pain indices created by the NGO in 2004 and last year.
Liao called on the government and NGOs to pay more attention to issues involving the health and prosperity of children, saying that they were "the future of Taiwan."
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai