ECONOMY
Taiwan fifth in wealth report
Taiwan ranked fifth in the world last year in terms of net financial assets per capita, also known as private wealth per person, according to Allianz’s latest Global Wealth Report published on Wednesday. The report, which assesses the financial situation of more than 50 nations worldwide, found that Taiwan’s net financial assets per capita were 92,360 euros (US$108,720). In Asia, Taiwan was second only to Japan, whose net financial assets per capita were assessed at 96,890 euros. It was the nation’s best ranking to date, with the household asset growth rate tripling to 10 percent since 2015. The report also said that the nation’s private debt was growing at a stable rate of 4.8 percent and warned of the consequences of a steep hike. “Taiwan’s debt growth has remained relatively stable in the past few years, which is a good trend,” Allianz’s Michael Heise said in the report. “Should private debt increase to too high a level, that would be lethal to Taiwan’s economic development.”
CRIME
Drunk driving to cost more
Starting in March next year, motorists convicted of drunk driving are to be required to pay a higher punitive premium for compulsory automobile liability insurance, the Financial Supervisory Commission said on Tuesday. The punitive premium is to be raised to NT$3,600 per violation, up from NT$2,100, to reflect the cost of compensation for victims of drunk driving, it said. There is no limit to the number of times violators can be charged a punitive premium, it said. The system was first introduced in March 2014 and by July, 67,730 insured motorists had been charged punitive premiums on top of their regular premium, which is NT$1,866 a year for men and NT$1,457 for women, Insurance Bureau statistics showed.
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