TECHNOLOGY
Taiwanese ‘app-rehensive’
Nearly 60 percent of smartphone users in the country have fewer than 20 apps on their handsets, a survey by the government-funded Institute for Information Industry found. In the survey, conducted in July, 29.5 percent of respondents said they had fewer than 10 applications on their cellphones, while 30.4 percent said they had between 11 and 20 apps. Only 11.3 percent of respondents said they had more than 51 apps on their smartphones. When asked about their buying habits regarding smartphone apps, 45.7 percent of male respondents and 35.9 percent of the women polled said they were willing to pay for them. However, of those groups, nearly two-thirds of the men, or 65 percent, and 69 percent of the women spent less than NT$200 per month on apps, the survey found. The institute said Taiwanese app users were more cautious than their counterparts in other countries. The survey had 2,596 valid responses and a margin of error of 1.92 percentage points.
DIPLOMACY
Hsieh denies second trip
Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday said he has not made any plans for a second trip to China, denying a local media report that he may revisit the country at the beginning of next year to attend a guide dog donation ceremony. Hsieh said he currently had no plans to visit China as the evaluation of his five-day trip there last month has not yet been completed. Earlier last month, Hsieh, a former DPP chairman, made a landmark visit to Beijing and Xiamen, meeting with high-ranking Chinese officials in charge of Taiwanese affairs, as well as Chinese academics. The trip was considered an ice-breaker for the DPP and China, as the two have long been at odds over Taiwan’s relationship with China, its sovereignty and independence.
HEALTH
Doctor warns on flu strain
A pediatrician urged the public to take extra precautions ahead of this year’s flu season due to the presence of the AH3 strain of the virus, which is more potent and could result in more fatalities. The AH3 strain is stronger than the AH1 and B strains of the flu virus and there is an increased chance that children may die from AH3 flu infections this season, said Huang Li-min (黃立民) of the Taipei-based National Taiwan University Hospital. The rate of flu-related deaths is usually higher among the elderly, many of whom contract the disease from children, Huang said. Vaccination is aimed at creating a safety net among the most vulnerable and the spread of flu will slow if 30 percent of those advised to be inoculated receive vaccination.
TOURISM
Pineapple cake top souvenir
Pineapple cakes are the bestselling souvenir at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, a recent survey found. Among the thousands of items sold at the airport’s gift shop, gift boxes of pineapple cakes were the No. 1 souvenir choices among foreign and local travelers, the airport said, citing the survey, in which travelers voted for their favorite Taiwanese gifts. Tasa Meng Corp. assistant manager Chen Yi-hsuan (陳意璇) said most Chinese tourists buy the gift boxes. In addition, Taiwanese traveling to visit relatives also tend to buy a few boxes, said Pan Tsuei-yi (潘翠宜), vice manager of Ever Rich Duty Free Shop. Other items on the top 10 list were mung bean cakes, tea leaves, tea sets and black tea, the survey showed.
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