■ POPULATION
Aborigines thriving
The number of Aborigines in the country totaled 494,107 as of the end of last year, up 2.05 percent from the previous year, the latest statistics by the Ministry of the Interior showed. Ministry officials said the increase was about six times that of the 0.34 percent growth rate for the overall population. Taiwan’s Aborigines were also younger on average than other groups, averaging 31.93 years of age as of the end of last year, 5.23 years lower than the 37.16 years the country’s population averaged as a whole. The number of Aborigines over 65 accounted for 6.1 percent of the total indigenous population, lower than the 10.4 percent of senior citizens in the overall population. Of the 14 tribes in Taiwan, the Amis were the most populous, with 177,909 people, followed by the Paiwan and Atayal tribes. The three tribes accounted for nearly 70 percent of the total Aborigine population.
■ TOURISM
Fahrenheit to play at NTU
Approximately 4,000 fans of the popular boy band Fahrenheit (飛輪海) from Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia are scheduled to meet their idols at the National Taiwan University auditorium today. The group was chosen last year as the nation’s representatives to promote tourism in Japan and South Korea. The bureau said half of the participants were mobilized through the group’s international fan association, while the other half won tickets through an online draw organized by the bureau. Fans from overseas will receive tickets and glowing sticks to attend the concerts as well as EasyCards featuring a band portrait of Fahrenheit. The majority of fans are young women, the bureau said, adding that the concert would help generate NT$100 million (US$ 2.9 million) in revenue from overseas.
■ PANDAS
Yuan-yuan scared by crowd
The Taipei City Zoo released the giant pandas Tuan-tuan (團團) and Yuan-yuan (圓圓) to the outdoor display area for the first time yesterday, with loud voices from eager visitors leaving Yuan-yuan frightened. The zoo said the pandas had become used to the quiet indoor display area since their arrival in December and that the cheers from visitors made them nervous. Yuan-yuan fled to a corner shortly after stepping into the outdoor area. She was later sent back to the indoor area. Tuan-tuan, on the other hand, did not appear to have been affected by the noise and played around in the outdoor area. Taipei Zoo spokesman Jason Chin (金仕謙) said the zoo would open the outdoor area for the pandas when the temperature reached 20˚C and it wasn’t raining. With Yuan-yuan showing signs of having entered the estrous cycle, the zoo will separate the two pandas and prepare them for mating when Tuan-tuan is ready, Chin said.
■ ARTS
Domingo accepts invitation
World-renowned tenor Placido Domingo has accepted an invitation to perform in Miaoli next month, the county government said on Friday. The county government sent the invitation for its international music festival, scheduled for March 19 to March 21, after the successful performance by Jose Carreras late last year, county officials said. The officials said that to cater to all age groups, they would also invite Brian Mcknight, winner of the best male R&B Soul Artist in the American Music Awards, as well as Maksim, a popular pianist from Croatia. Ticket prices for the three performances have yet to be announced.
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