■ Society
Hotline for parents created
A foundation created in the memory of Liu Hsia (劉俠), a presidential advisor who died earlier this year, has set up a phone service to help people with family problems. Friends of Hsing Lin Tzu, which was named after Liu's other name, said it would help parents to find suitable organizations to resolve problems such as disagreements between a couple or discipline issues with children. The founda-tion said it would only serve as a medium between the parents and the organiza-tions that offer counseling and solutions. It said it would also hold activities and seminars at the Taipei Youth Activity Center, providing parents and children opportunities to learn more about each other. Liu, who had serious physical disabilities, died after being beaten by her caregiver. The number for the new phone service, called Parents Supporting Parents, is (02) 2351-5313.
■ Society
Masseurs urge job security
The Taipei Blind Masseur Association yesterday said it hoped the government would help preserve the exclusive rights of visually impaired people to work as masseurs. The association said that only visually impaired people could obtain legal certificates to work as masseurs, but there were different kinds mas-sages offered by other people, such as those with beauty-salon certificates who do massage at spas. "Normal people are com-peting with the visually impaired for the jobs and it is making our lives difficult. But the visually impaired people are the only ones with certificates and they are professionally trained and offer excellent services," said Min Chang-chien (明章建), an association board member. The association has a hotline number (02-2562-7733) for people who want to locate certified blind masseurs in their neighborhood. The association said there are about 180 qualified blind masseurs in Taipei City.
■ Diplomacy
Envoy heads to Bratislava
The nation's first represen-tative to the Slovak Republic will leave Berlin tomorrow for the Slovakian capital of Bratislava to assume office. Chen Cheng-chih (陳正治) was the deputy represen-tative to Germany and the overseas Chinese commu-nity in Berlin hosted a farewell party for him on Sunday evening. Chen said he will forge extensive ties with all Slovakia's govern-ment agencies and major private groups once he assumes office. Noting that Slovakia will be admitted to the EU next May, Chen said the opening of the new representative office, which will be designated as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Slovakia, will facilitate Taiwan's development of cooperative ties with other European countries. At present, Slovakia has only one Taiwanese-funded company and Chen said it is his hope that major trade and industry associations can organize delegations to survey the trade and investment opportunities in Slovakia, which has a population of 5.4 million.
■ Foreign aid
Ethiopians to get rice
Taiwan will donate 5,000 tonnes of rice to Ethiopia through international charity organizations, an official of the Council of Agriculture announced yesterday. The official said the rice will be shipped later this month. He noted that approximately 14 million Ethiopians are cur-rently suffering from food shortages due to a long drought, according to a UN report.
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