EDUCATION
Youngsters miss sleep
About 80 percent of elementary and junior-high school students are not getting enough sleep and about 20 percent say they were overloaded with schoolwork, a survey released on Wednesday shows. Child Welfare League Foundation chief executive Wang Yu-min (王育敏) said parents’ high expectations for their children and feelings of uncertainty about the education system were the two major causes of pressure on children. The foundation conducted the survey early last month among 3,115 fifth to eighth-graders nationwide and found that only 18 percent of respondents said they slept more than eight hours per night, while 18 percent said they had less than six hours of sleep per night. About 62 percent of those polled said they spent their after-school time on tutorial classes, 32 percent had quizzes every day within the past two months and 39 percent had stayed up past 11pm or all night studying. The group called on parents to reduce children’s after-school classes and spend more time with them. It also urged schools to give fewer quizzes to create a happy learning environment for the students.
HEALTH
HIV/AIDS cases increase
The number of new HIV/AIDS cases in New Taipei City (新北市) totaled 414 as of the end of last month, up about 20 percent from 337 for the same period last year, the city’s health department said on Wednesday. The department said that among the 414 new cases, half of them were people aged between 20 and 29, with unprotected homosexual sex believed to account for 75 percent of infections. Health official Lee Chia-chi (李佳琪) said the situation in New Taipei City was similar to that of other places in the nation, adding that the number of HIV/AIDS-affected people in the gay community has grown in recent years. The use of condoms in the gay community is lower than that of other groups and the department will address this fact as part of its awareness campaign, Lee said, adding that the best way to prevent AIDS is to have a single partner and use a condom. In line with World AIDS Day on Thursday, the department will begin a series of awareness campaigns.
SOCIETY
Santa’s helpers sought
The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families on Wednesday began a 12th annual volunteer drive to find people who are willing to play Santa Claus to 1,000 disadvantaged children and helping them realize their Christmas wishes. Children sponsored by the fund hung cards bearing their wishes on a Christmas tree at a Greater Taichung hotel. One 11-year-old boy wished for a blanket so that he and his mother could each have a blanket of their own. Another 10-year-old boy wished for a wig for his mother, who is undergoing chemotherapy. Others wished for sneakers, watches, desks, jackets, electronic translators and toys. The public can pick up a card until Dec. 10 and try to fulfill the wish, the fund said. Some of the wishes have been posted online at the fund’s Chinese-language Web site, cccf.org.tw/new/Christmas/tree/index.php?area.
CROSS-STRAIT TRADE
Meat suppliers win port deal
Five meat and poultry suppliers have become the first in the nation to be allowed to export their produce to China through designated Chinese ports, Pingtung County officials said yesterday. The five farm produce companies are now able to export through ports assigned by the entry-exit and quarantine bureaus of Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen. The official approval came after seven months of negotiations with China.
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