■Weather
Cold front to hit today
Another cold front is set to arrive in Taiwan today, bringing temperatures down once again, according to the Central Weather Bureau (CWB). Except for some small showers in the northeastern part of the country, Taiwan saw sunny weather yesterday with sunlight raising temperatures by two to three degrees. Daytime temperatures yesterday were above 20°C. Temperatures will begin to fall again this afternoon. The cold front will be at its strongest in the early hours of tomorrow, according to the CWB, with temperatures projected to be around 10°C for the northern half of Taiwan. Temperatures will rise again on Thursday, the CWB said.
■ Media
Sophie Wang starts reporting
After having been barred from entering the Legislative Yuan, headline-maker Sophie Wang (王筱嬋) started her new job as a TV reporter covering news in the lawmaking body yesterday. As a former soap-opera actress and former aide to then DPP lawmaker Cheng Yu-cheng (鄭余鎮), Wang landed a job at Global TV to cover legislative news. Some media outlets regarded her employment as a farcical tactic to rescue the news network's poor ratings and questioned Wang's professional credentials, local Chinese-language newspapers reported yesterday. Responding to the mounting criticisms and doubts, program section chief at Global TV Chien Chih-hai (簡志海) reiterated that the company will "give suitable treatment" to the intern reporter if she fails to do a good job or tries to abuse her capacity as a reporter. Wang is notorious for a string of love affairs, first with KMT Legislator John Chang (章孝嚴) and later with Cheng Yu-cheng, who voluntarily left the DPP to become an independent lawmaker after the party decided to discipline him.
■ Train tickets
Holiday bookings open
People will be able to book tickets for east-bound train trips during the Lunar New Year holidays starting 6am today, according to the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA, 台灣鐵路管理局) under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. West-bound tickets will be available from Thursday. The TRA said passengers should pick up their tickets at train stations or post offices within five days after booking them. If the departure date is less than five days after the booking date, they should pick up their tickets at least one day before the departure date.
■ Legislation
Labor-law changes passed
The Legislative Yuan passed amendments to the Labor Insurance Law (勞保條例) yesterday. The amendments were proposed by the PFP and DPP legislative caucuses and will provide NT$10 billion for workers to apply for low-interest loans. According to the amendments, workers covered by the labor insurance scheme for more than 15 years are eligible to apply for a maximum loan of NT$200,000 at an interest rate of no more than 3.75 percent. PFP Legislator Lin Hui-kuan (林惠官), in charge of the negotiations, said it is estimated that 2.3 million workers can benefit from the bill. He also expressed his hope that the Council of Labor Affairs (勞委會) can implement the measure before the Lunar New Year, which starts Feb. 1 this year. Meanwhile, Lin appealed to the government to assist the 4 percent of people who are not covered by the National Health Insurance (全民健保) program.
Agencies
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
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
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