TRANSPORTATION
Changhua bus trial opens
The nation’s first driverless minibus hits the road today in a trial run in Changhua County, the county government said yesterday. Dubbed “WinBus,” the autonomous minibus is to follow a 7.5km route in Changhua Coastal Industrial Park in Lugang Township (鹿港), it said. The WinBus was built by a chain of local industries, under the auspices of the Automotive Research and Testing Center, with all the parts and components manufactured locally. Financial and technological support was provided by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The Changhua County government invited the public to try the bus today, but warned that space would be limited. If the trial proves successful, more self-driving buses would be put on the route, which could be expanded to 12.6km, it said.
SOCIETY
Short-lived marriages rising
Of the nation’s 54,346 divorces recorded last year, more than one-third came in the first five years of marriage, up sharply from 10 years ago, Ministry of the Interior statistics released on Saturday last week showed. The number of divorces was down 56 from 2018 and were within the range seen in over the past 10 years, the statistics showed. The highest number of divorces in the past decade was 58,037 in 2010, the low was 53,144 in 2014. The median duration of marriages that ended in divorce last year was 8.17 years, down from 8.25 years in 2018 and 8.51 years in 2010. However, 34.6 percent were in marriages of less than five years — up sharply from 27.7 percent in 2010 — compared with 22 percent involving marriages of five to 10 years and 43.4 percent in marriages of more than 10 years, the ministry said. The vast majority (82.12 percent) of divorces were between Taiwanese spouses, while 17.88 percent involved a non-Taiwanese spouse, the statistics showed.
SOCIETY
Pingtung to host ICA leg
Pingtung County has once again won the right to host the Asia-Pacific Competition leg of this year’s International Chocolate Awards (ICA), the Pingtung County Government said. The awards were launched in 2012, and this will be the second consecutive year that the county hosts the Asia-Pacific leg, and the third time for Taiwan. Kaohsiung hosted them in 2018. Pingtung-based chocolate makers won 10 golds, 24 silvers 14 bronzes and six special awards in last year’s Asia-Pacific leg, as well as seven golds, 25 silvers and six bronzes in the ICA World Finals in Guatemala. Details of this year’s contest can be found on the ICA’s Web site. Entries can be submitted between Friday and Aug. 4, the county said. The award winners are to be announced in October, it added.
CULTURE
Award ceremony date set
The 31st Golden Melody Awards for Traditional Arts and Music will be held in the second half of October at the Taiwan Traditional Theatre Center in Taipei, organizers said on Monday. The awards ceremony had been scheduled for the middle of next month, but has been pushed back to Oct. 24, the National Center for Traditional Arts (NCFTA) said in a statement. The nominees are to be announced on Aug. 11, it said. The Ministry of Culture said a total of 1,078 works from 102 artists and groups, 71 in the publishing category and 31 in the theatrical performance category, were submitted last year. Although the awards still carry the Golden Melody Awards name, they have been held separately from the Golden Melody Awards ceremony since 2014 and are now held under the auspices of the NCFTA.
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