■SOCIETY
Population to drop in 2016
The country’s population is forecast to begin registering negative growth from 2016, the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) reported on Friday. Citing this year’s World Population Data Sheet published by the US Population Reference Bureau (PRB), the CEPD said Taiwan’s population would dwindle in 2050 to 21.5 million — 70th in the world — as a result of a continued decline in the birth rate and an aging population. As of the end of June this year, Taiwan’s population was 23.1 million — up by 90,000 from a year ago, the CEPD cited the PRB data as saying. It was the world’s 49th largest population in the 209 countries surveyed and the 11th-largest in the 19 countries in Southeast Asia. In terms of population density, Taiwan had 639 residents per square kilometer, lower than Singapore’s 7,013 and Hong Kong’s 6,360, but higher than South Korea’s 488 and Japan’s 338.
■POLITICS
Tsai arrives in Los Angeles
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) arrived in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon on the third leg of her two-week US visit. Tsai was greeted warmly by DPP West Chapter members and supporters. Later the same evening, Tsai delivered a speech at a party fund-raiser held in her honor. The DPP’s Department of International Affairs Director Lin Cheng-wei (林成蔚) said that Tsai had attended several fund-raising dinners during her US visit, providing her with the opportunity to explain the DPP’s new direction under her leadership to its supporters in the US as well as listen to their expectations concerning the party’s future. Tsai flew into Los Angeles from Washington. She is scheduled to head to San Jose today to meet with party members based in western California before heading back to Taiwan on Tuesday.
■EDUCATION
Curriculum heads to US
Taiwan’s Ministry of Education on Friday donated Taiwanese elementary school natural sciences and math textbooks to a bilingual center under the jurisdiction of the New York State and New York City education departments. Ethan Kuo (郭秋義), director of the Cultural Division under the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York Division, presented the donation of 23 math textbooks and 22 natural and life sciences textbooks on behalf of the ministry to Pat Lo (羅文萃), director of the Asia Languages Bilingual ESL Technical Assistance Center. Schools in three of New York’s five boroughs — Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn — offer bilingual immersion programs.
■POLITICS
Local finances get a boost
A NT$20 billion (US$625 million) special fund will be allocated to local governments across the country beginning next week to help them improve their deteriorating finances, Ministry of Finance (MOF) officials announced on Friday. Most of the city and county governments will receive the funds from the central government within the next week as part of its efforts to help stimulate the country’s economy, a ministry official said. The ministry made the announcement following a special screening meeting on aid for local governments and the purposes of the funding. The officials said the local governments would use the grants to repay their national debts. Under the program, local governments can use any remaining funds to pay health insurance subsidies owed to the central government or subsidies for preferential interest rates on savings for retired public servants, the officials said.
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