■ SOCIETY
Centenarians on the rise
The number of centenarians in the country totaled 1,075 as of this month, with the oldest being a 122-year-old woman, the Ministry of the Interior reported yesterday. The latest ministry survey showed that the oldest woman lives in Taitung County, while the oldest man — now 112 — lives in Hualien County. The number of centenarians increased by 78 from last year’s level, the ministry said, adding that 91 percent, or 982 centenarians are between 100 and 104 years old. Women account for 759, or 70 percent, of the total number of centenarians, representing 2.4 times the 316 male centenarians in the country, the survey said.
■ POLITICS
Station apologizes to Chen
A TV station apologized to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) late on Saturday night after one of its anchorwomen made vulgar remarks about Chen when she thought the camera was off her. The remark came on Saturday when TVBS anchorwoman, Liao Ying-ting (廖盈婷), was ready to take over the prime-time news program. An open microphone picked up the anchorwoman cursing: “That guy is a psycho. Tell him to cough up the money. He should eat shit.” Chen’s office issued a statement later that night condemning the crude remarks. The statement demanded the station apologize within 24 hours or face legal action. It also said Chen might refuse future interviews by the station. TVBS apologized to Chen and the audience later on Saturday and blamed the blunder on “technical negligence.”
■ CRIME
Porno comics lead to arrest
A 25-year-old tattoo studio apprentice living in Taipei City’s Wanhua (萬華) District, surnamed Liu (劉), was arrested on his birthday on Friday for selling pornographic comic books online. Liu said it was a “heart-breaking decision” to sell four comic books — which he described as the best of his collection from high school — from a collection that he has kept for seven to eight years. He said he only put them online for sale because he was in desperate need of money. However, not long after Liu put his comics on an online auction site and advertised his books as “extremely pornographic,” he attracted police attention. The police joined and won the bidding, then arrested Liu during the face-to-face trade.
■ ENERGY
MOEA mulls new meters
To further reduce energy consumption nationwide, the government is working with the private sector to develop an “advanced metering infrastructure” for households, sources at the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said. The front-end technology development has been commissioned to the Hsinchu-based Industrial Technology Research Institute, while the back-end network establishment will be carried out by the government-run Taipower Co, sources said. The ministry’s Bureau of Energy (BOE) said the advanced metering infrastructure, or AMI, is a system that can collect and analyze real-time data on electricity use in a given area, as small as a house or as large as a facility. With the AMI system, users can modify consumption based on suggestions given by the system, BOE officials said. Bureau Director Yeh Hui-ching (葉惠青) said that the new system could help households and offices reduce energy consumption by 15 percent.
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