■DIPLOMACY
MAC urges better Macau ties
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday called for Macau to consider establishing a liaison office in Taiwan to help boost bilateral relations and exchanges. In a statement, the council congratulated Fernando Chui (崔世安) on his selection as the new chief executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region and called on him to increase bilateral ties. Noting that both Taiwan and Macau act as gateways to China, the council said stabilizing ties between Taiwan and Macau would be conducive to the development of cross-strait relations. The council statement expressed hope that Chui, who will replace Edmund Ho (何厚鏵) as chief executive of Macau, will strengthen ties with Taiwan based on the solid foundation that was laid by Ho and his administrative team over the past 10 years.
■SOCIETY
More men commit suicide
The number of men who committed suicide last year was twice as high as the number of women who killed themselves, while the number of women who sought help from suicide prevention networks was twice as large as men, Taiwan Society of Suicidology secretary-general Liao Shih-cheng (廖士程) told a news conference yesterday. Liao said the reason behind the difference may be the social expectation that men should be tougher and more self-reliant when it comes to emotions. He therefore urged men not to hesitate to find help, while also calling on families and friends to extend more psychological support to those in need. Meanwhile, the society’s chairman, Lee Ming-pin (李明濱), urged the government to create a suicide prevention hotline for men because female social workers answering existing hotlines may not be able to help suicidal males.
■CRIME
Prisons overcrowded: MOJ
Two years after the government commuted jail sentences as part of its effort to ease prison overcrowding, local penitentiaries are again jammed with inmates, judicial authorities said on Sunday. Statistics released by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) show that 65,148 people are now imprisoned, which is 10,224, or 18.6 percent, more than local prisons have the capacity to hold. The ratio is approaching the previous peak set in 2007, when the number of inmates exceeded prison capacity by 22.7 percent. That prompted the government to commute the sentences of many prisoners to free up prison cells.
■SOCIETY
Number of temples grows
There are 14,993 temples and churches for the nation’s 23 million residents, approximately one place of worship per 1,500 residents, statistics recently released by the Ministry of the Interior show. At the end of last year, Taiwan had 11,731 registered temples, 2,356 more than 10 years ago, and 3,262 churches, an increase of 145 over the same period. The 9,202 Taoist temples, many of which not only house Taoist folk deities but also idols of Buddha and the Buddhist goddess Guanyin (觀音), account for 78.4 percent of all temples. The 2,291 Buddhist temples account for 19.5 percent of the total and the 200 I-Kuan Tao temples account for 1.7 percent. Southern counties and cities have more temples than elsewhere in the country, with Tainan County leading the list with 1,245, followed by Kaohsiung County with 1,142 and Pingtung County with 1,068. Taipei City has the largest number of churches, with 432, followed by Hualien County’s 300 and Taitung County’s 266. Protestant churches outnumber Catholic churches by approximately three to one.
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