The government plans to release its well-being index in August as scheduled, but it will be composed only of internationally recognized elements if national elements are not established by then, Executive Yuan spokesperson Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said.
Since former premier Sean Chen (陳冲) was in office, the Executive Yuan has been working to set up an index to evaluate the well-being of the nation’s citizens. The index would be a composite of components used by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and other factors measuring the country’s specific situation.
Chen had planned to release results of the index in August.
However, at a meeting presided over by Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) on Wednesday, a decision was made that the instrument could be developed in two phases if the Cabinet needs more time to reach a consensus on which national factors to be taken into account to measure whether the quality of life of Taiwanese is getting better or worse, Cheng said.
Jiang has given his consent that the Your Better Life Index, which included 24 indicators in 11 dimensions the OECD has identified as essential in the area of material living conditions and quality of life, would compose part of the Taiwanese Index of Well-being, as suggested by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Cheng said.
Cheng said that the Cabinet took a rather cautious approach in deciding on national factors to be included in the calculation of the index.
Jiang demanded a review of a draft proposal on national factors by Vice Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) before it is sent to another Cabinet-level meeting for deliberation and did not set a timetable to decide on a formula for calculating the index, Cheng said.
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