SOCIETY
More divorces than Japan
Taiwan has a higher divorce rate than that registered in Japan and Singapore, according to data released by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) yesterday. In the first 11 months of last year, 49,000 married couples got divorced in Taiwan, equal to an average of 2.3 married couples per 1,000 people legally ending their marriages, the DGBAS data showed. The figure was slightly lower than the average crude divorce rate of 2.6 divorces per 1,000 people registered for the period from 2000 to 2012, the DGBAS said in a statement. Taiwan’s divorce rate was lower than Russia’s 4.7 and the US’ 3.6 recorded in 2011, while roughly the same as that registered in South Korea’s 2.3 in 2012, Finland’s 2.4 in 2012 and Germany’s 2.3 in 2011. Meanwhile, 132,000 couples got married in Taiwan between January and November last year, for a crude marriage rate of 6.2 marriages per 1,000 population.
DIPLOMACY
Allies to learn Mandarin
Starting this year, Taiwan is to send certified professionals to its diplomatic allies and other countries to teach Mandarin Chinese, the government-funded agency responsible for the initiative said yesterday. The countries that so far have shown interest in the new initiative are mainly in Latin America and include Panama, Paraguay, El Salvador and Nicaragua, according the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund (Taiwan ICDF). “We will send certified professionals to our diplomatic allies and other countries with which we have good ties, if they need Mandarin Chinese teachers,” Taiwan ICDF secretary-general Tao Wen-lung (陶文隆) said. The agency plans to recruit certified Mandarin Chinese instructors for the initiative.
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