TRANSPORTATION
Badouzih Station to reopen
Badouzih Station (八斗子車站) in Keelung is scheduled to resume services this week and is expected to become a tourist attraction on the Shenao Branch Line (深澳支線), the Taiwan Railways Administration said. The administration said it spent NT$10.82 million (US$336,406) to renovate the station, which is to resume services on Wednesday. It is an extension of Haikeguan Station (海科館), which opened in January 2014.
SOCIETY
Taiwan third-most ignorant
Taiwan has been ranked the third “most ignorant” nation in the world in an ignorance index survey that asked respondents from 40 nations questions about their homelands. The index was part of the Ipsos MORI Perils of Perception Survey conducted by Ipsos MORI, a market research company based in the UK, from Sept. 22 through Nov. 6. The survey polled more than 27,000 people aged 16 to 64, including about 500 Taiwanese. The index was calculated based on how accurately the respondents answered five questions about their nation’s population, number of Muslims, healthcare spending and home ownership. According to the survey results, India topped the index, followed by China, Taiwan, South Africa and the US. Ranked from sixth to 10th places were Brazil, Thailand, Singapore, Turkey and Indonesia. In contrast, the Netherlands was the most informed nation, followed by the UK, South Korea, the Czech Republic and Malaysia.
POLITICS
DPP’s donations top KMT’s
Donations to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) last year were NT$100 million (US$3.11 million) more than those to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), according to a statement published by the Control Yuan on Thursday. The DPP received NT$192.21 million in political donations last year. Individuals contributed NT$131.47 million, followed by corporations with NT$50.01 million and civic groups at NT$1.06 million. The DPP last year spent NT$157.89 million. Election expenditure accounted for more than half at NT$63.46 million, followed by operational costs at NT$33.60 million. The DPP recorded a balance of payments of NT$34.32 million for the year. The KMT received NT$91.42 million in political donations last year, of which NT$40.23 million was given by individuals, NT$50.26 million by corporations and NT$750,000 by civic groups. The KMT last year spent NT$82.08 million, with more than half, or NT$48.6 million, spent on elections, while NT$15.86 million was spent on operational costs. The KMT recorded a balance of payments of NT$9.34 million.
CRIME
Crime incidence rate down
A total of 246,934 criminal cases were reported in Taiwan in the first 10 months of the year, which translates into one crime being reported every two minutes, according to government statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior. The figure represents a decrease of 3,252 cases from last year and a slowdown from 2010, when one crime was reported every 1.4 minutes, the ministry said. From January to October this year, 57,854 cases (23.4 percent of the total) of offenses against public safety were reported, of which 91.6 percent involved drunk driving, it said, adding that burglary was the second-most commonly reported crime, accounting for 47,821 cases, or 19.3 percent of the total. A total of 231,661 criminal cases were resolved, with the crime resolution rate standing at 93.8 percent, according to the ministry.
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