CULTURE
Chiayi museum to open
The National Palace Museum’s Southern Branch in Chiayi County is to feature 10 exhibitions when it opens to the public on a trial basis on Monday next week. The 10 exhibitions are to showcase a variety of Asian textiles, Buddhist art, Imari porcelain from Japan, South Asian costumes, Asian tea culture, Islamic jades, Goryeo Dynasty Korea ceramics and blue and white porcelain from the Ming Dynasty, the museum said. The exhibitions are also to feature videos that introduce Asian art and Chiayi’s history from prehistoric to modern times. The Chiayi County Government approved the business license of the National Palace Museum Southern Branch on Friday last week, the museum said.
EDUCATION
Students running wild: poll
Unlike their urban counterparts who often have to rush to tutoring centers after school, 36.4 percent of schoolchildren in remote parts of the nation simply wander about after school, according to the results of a survey. The survey, conducted by the Child Welfare League Foundation, found 20.3 percent of families in remote areas do not restrict where their children go when school finishes and 37.2 percent of children who wander about after school have had unfavorable experiences over the past year. The three kinds of disturbing behavior schoolchildren in remote areas most commonly see are fighting, vandalism and bullying. The survey found that 20 percent of children in remote areas are being taken care of by their grandparents, and 15.1 percent are living with relatives while their parents work in cities. While 23.2 percent of the children do not participate in any extracurricular activities or after-school programs, 24.7 percent want to study a skill, but do not have the funds.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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