■ Education
MOE releases student data
Although the total number of elementary and junior high school students has been declining, the number of those from mixed marriages has increased 1.8 times over the past four years, according to a report released this month by the Ministry of Education. For the current academic year, a total of 80,166 children from mixed marriages are enrolled in elementary and junior high schools, up 33 percent from the previous year, the report said. Of these students, 28,776 have a parent from China, followed by 18,007 with an Indonesian parent and 16,584 with a parent from Vietnam. The number of elementary and junior high school students has decreased from 2.87 million in the 2003-2004 academic year to 2.75 million in the current academic year, according to the report. In contrast, the number of those from mixed marriages has jumped from 30,040 in the 2003-2004 academic year to more than 80,000 in the current academic year.
■ Society
Ministry amends welfare law
Ministry of the Interior (MOI) officials said yesterday that the passage of an amendment to the Senior Citizen Welfare Law (老人福利法) will help facilitate government efforts to protect the elderly. The amended law, which passed the Legislative Yuan on Friday, was first promulgated in January 1980, and has not been comprehensively revised for the past 10 years. The amended law stipulates that if nursing homes abuse their charges, withhold information on the abuse, provide an unsafe environment or unsanitary food, they will face fines of between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000 (US$1,830-US$9,150) and will be fined continuously until the situation is rectified. If residents are found to have been injured or abandoned, the nursing homes involved will face fines of between NT$30,000 and NT$150,000 plus criminal charges and the publication of their names.
■ Enviroment
EPA wants better water
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has demanded improvements in water potability in Mailiao Township (麥寮), Yunlin County, as well as on Kinmen. EPA officials said they have asked local environmental protection departments to fine water treatment plants that fail to reach quality standards or fail to improve. The officials noted that arsenic levels tested at the Mailiao water plant last year were 0.0139mg per liter, higher than the standard level of 0.01mg per liter. An investigation showed that the plant had been taking water from three wells that have high levels of arsenic. Water quality on Kinmen has also been unstable due to insufficient water resources.
■ Diplomacy
Tu pays visit to Vatican
Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) visited the prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, in the Vatican on Friday. The pair held talks on promoting cultural and educational exchanges between Taiwan and the Holy See after Tu arrived in Rome a day earlier. During their talks Grocholewski said that he was impressed by Taiwan's political, economic and cultural advances when he visited the nation in 2003. He explained the Holy See's educational system and concepts and emphasized that the Catholic Church instills the core values of human rights, world peace, justice and family values in its schools worldwide. Tu expressed his admiration for the Catholic Church's contribution to society and said Taiwan identifies with the Holy See's educational values.
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