SOCIETY
Amis nation’s largest group
The Amis remained Taiwan’s biggest Aboriginal group last year, accounting for 37.1 percent of the nation’s indigenous people, the Ministry of Interior said on Saturday. The ministry said that there were 540,023 Aboriginal residents last year, up 1.2 percent from the previous year. Their average age is 33.7, compared with an average age of 39.8 for all Taiwanese. The top three Aboriginal communities were the Amis with 200,604 people, or 37.1 percent of the total, the Paiwan with 96,334 (17.8 percent) and the Atayal with 85,888 (15.9 percent). Hualien County had the most Aboriginal residents, with 91,675, or 17 percent of the total number of indigenous inhabitants in the nation. Taitung County came in second with 14.7 percent and Taoyuan was third with 12.1 percent. In terms of the ratio of Aborigines to the overall population in each county or city, Taitung County had the highest number with 35.5 percent, followed by Hualien County with 27.5 percent and Pingtung County with 6.9 percent.
SOCIETY
Peng, Sui top lovers’ list
Actor Eddie Peng (彭于晏) and actress Sonia Sui (隋棠) were selected as the most lusted-after dream lovers among female and male office workers respectively, according to the results of a recent survey by the yes123 job bank. In a multiple choice survey ahead of Valentine’s Day on Saturday, 31-year-old Peng won the votes of 26 percent of the female respondents to top the male dream lover list, beating Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武), 41, and Wilson Chen (陳柏霖), 31. Kaneshiro drew the backing of 23.1 percent, while Chen got 20.9 percent. Sui, 34, took the title on the female front, earning support from 22.1 percent of the respondents, followed by actress Puff Kuo (郭雪芙), 26, and TV host Smire Weng (翁滋蔓), 28, who tied with 21.5 percent each. The online survey was conducted between Jan. 20 and Tuesday last week among office workers under the age of 39. It collected 1,362 valid samples, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.66 percentage points.
SOCIETY
Hunter killed by friend
A 69-year-old man was shot dead after a friend mistook him for a boar during a pig hunt in Miaoli County on Friday, local police said on Saturday. The man, surnamed Chen (陳), was taking part in a monthly hunting trip with three friends on Friday night, but fell behind the others because his headlight was broken, police said. After the group spread out, one man sensed some movement in nearby bushes and fired a shot, but it turned out that he hit Chen. Chen’s friends were taken into custody, the police said, adding that the weapon used in the shooting was not a legitimate hunting weapon.
SOCIETY
Niceness pays off in poll
“Nice” Taiwanese topped the list of nine benefits to living in the nation, according to a survey conducted by the American Chamber of Taipei (AmCham Taipei) among its members late last year. Taiwanese are “extremely nice” and “my family feels safe in Taiwan” were top responses to the survey conducted in November and December last year, according to the results of the AmCham survey posted on its official Web site. Other benefits cited were: Taiwan is an easy country to live in; it provides quality medical and dental services; it provides a wide range of transportation alternatives to driving; it delivers reliable electricity; it provides adequate shopping opportunities; mobile telephone coverage is excellent and the postal service is excellent.
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