Yu-cheng Carwash (
"I feel good working here," said Lee, a 20-year-old mentally handicapped worker at the site, which is operated by the Yu-cheng Welfare Foundation for the Handicapped.
Lee and his colleagues, who number over 40 in total, say the first anniversary of the car wash center yesterday gave them a sense of accomplishment as they were able to learn skills there to survive on their own. All are either mentally or physically challenged.
"I am very happy that the center is one year old now. It has created a workplace for the disabled," said section chief Huang Yu-hsueh (黃玉雪), who suffered third degree burns during a car explosion in 1997.
"It's like a big family here. The kids [referring to younger workers at the site] respect me, and I treat them as members of my family," said Huang, who was unable to leave her home for over three years after the accident, fearing what people might think of her appearance.
Ke Pang-sing (
While nobody says handicapped workers are the fastest car-washers around, Kenneth Chu (朱欽浩), the owner of the vehicle Lee and his colleagues were cleaning, cited "efficiency" as the reason why he prefers to use the services of the Yu-cheng site whenever he wants to have the interior of his car cleaned.
"They [workers at the Yu-cheng carwash] do a better job here, as more workers clean the car simultaneously, and [the interior of] my car is far cleaner after the service," Chu said.
However, financial worries cast a shadow over the center's future. It has lost between NT$100,000 and NT$300,000 per month since operations began last October, said Chen Chieh-ju (陳節如), chairwoman of the foundation.
Attributing the losses to rental fees in excess of NT$120,000 per month, as well as a less-than-ideal driveway design, Chen has turned to city officials for help.
Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
The current rental subsidy for the site, which is located under the Chienkuo overpass, is 70 percent, said Jeng Tsuen-chui (
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
RSS