TECHNOLOGY
Mobile surfing booming: poll
The number of mobile Internet users in the nation is increasing, although slow connectivity is still a common complaint, according to a survey published yesterday by the state-funded Taiwan Network Information Center. The study found that 9.88 million Taiwanese, or 47.27 percent of residents aged over 12, used mobile Internet between November last year and April, a steady increase from the 41.13 percent recorded in a survey last year and a steep jump from the 25.91 percent recorded in 2012. About 60.79 percent of respondents to yesterday’s poll said they are “satisfied” with their mobile Internet service, while 25.41 percent said they are “dissatisfied” and 7.33 percent said they are “very dissatisfied.” Only 4.43 percent reporting being “very satisfied” with their mobile browsing and 2.04 percent answering “no comment.” The survey collected 3,134 valid samples via telephone from May 5 to May 26 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.3 percent.
HEALTH
Infant virus contained
No more respiratory tract infections in infants have been reported at a postpartum care center in Changhua County since steps were taken to stem an outbreak of a respiratory virus, authorities said earlier this week. The postpartum care unit at Changhua Christian Hospital has been thoroughly sterilized and the unit has quarantined 10 of the 16 infants and three medical workers who tested positive for the virus to keep it from spreading, the county government’s Public Health Bureau said. Changhua Christian Hospital said it stopped taking in newborns from other hospitals starting on Aug. 13 and stressed it would only reopen the postpartum care center to new cases if no new infections emerge in the next 10 days.
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
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
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