FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Refugee aid gets NT$7m
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said that the nation has offered a donation of NT$7 million (US$230,000) to assist refugees amid US-led coalition air strikes against Islamic State targets in both Iraq and Syria. The donations were made to humanitarian projects launched by the Holy See, the ministry said. The ministry also reminded people to pay attention to their personnel safety when traveling in the Middle East and to make sure that they have emergency contact information for the nation’s embassies and representative offices in the region. The ministry also reminded Taiwanese to stay safe and avoid traveling alone in Laos after a Taiwanese businessman died there recently. The victim went missing after leaving his factory in August and was later found dead.
HEALTH
Poll finds male sex problem
One in three men surveyed said they experience premature ejaculation (PE), according to a recent poll by the Taiwanese Association of Andrology. The association said the survey found that some men as young as in their 20s ejaculate within one minute of penetration, while many 40-somethings expressed dissatisfaction over ejaculating within three minutes. PE is detrimental to couples’ happiness, according to Taiwanese Association of Andrology president William Huang (黃志賢). Summarizing academic findings from Taiwan and abroad, he said women are 2.7 times more likely to suffer from sexual dysfunction if their male partners experience PE. PE can occur regardless of race and age and is hard to define, said Chien Pang-ping (簡邦平), a urologist at Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital. The two experts recommended activities like yoga for couples struggling with PE as a way to increase emotional understanding.
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