■ Recycling
Old computers donated
President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday presided over an event at which recycled computers were donated to underprivileged groups. He said he hopes Taiwan can become not just an information giant but also "a country with love." To reduce the digital divide between urban and rural areas and to promote the idea of recycling, a campaign organized by the Presidential Office, the Cabinet's Environmental Protection Administration and the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, as well as the Institute for the Information Industry, has been under way for some time. It has received enthusiastic response from the private sector. A total of 571 recycled computers have been collected in the campaign.
■ Cross-Strait Ties
Kinmen police visit Xiamen
Kinmen County Police Bureau Director Chen Jui-tung (陳瑞通) traveled to Xiamen yesterday via the "small three links" route as part of his efforts to promote crime-fighting cooperation across the Taiwan Strait. Chen is among the 13 members of a delegation organized by the Association of Friends of the Kinmen County Police. The mission, headed by Lee Hsi-jung (李錫榮), includes several other senior and middle-ranking Kinmen police officers. "We hope the visit will contribute to the establishment of a Kinmen-Xiamen crime-fighting cooperative mechanism, " Chen said prior to his departure for Xiamen. Chen is the second Kinmen police chief to visit Xiamen since Taiwan legalized direct trade, postal and shipping links between Kinmen and Matsu and Xiamen and Mawei in China.
■ Marriage
Men opt for foreign brides
About a quarter of Taiwanese men who tied the knot last year married women from either China or Southeast Asian countries, the government said yesterday. The latest figures underscore a recent trend showing that many Taiwanese, mostly older men or laborers, have given up chasing better-educated Taiwanese women who tend to reject suitors whom they deem inferior intellectually, financially and socially. Of the 173,343 marriages in Taiwan last year, 16 percent, or 27,626, of the brides came from China. Another 16,747, or 9.6 percent, came from Vietnam, Indonesia or Thailand, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounts and Statistics said in a report. The Chinese brides had an average age of 30.3, while the Southeast Asian brides had an average age of 23, the report said.
■ Employment
Youth program launched
To help youth lacking work experience get a taste of the real world, the Cabinet yesterday offered 2,000 six-month job opportunities at various workplaces, including non-governmental organizations. "It's a win-win-win situation for the industry, the government and young people," Vice Premier Lin Hsin-i (林信義) said in a press conference yesterday. Citizens between 18 and 29 years of age are eligible to apply for the program. In addition to the monthly allowance of NT$8,000, qualified candidates will be covered by national labor insurance. The government will also issue a certificate to employees at the end of the program and encourage the employer to hire them full-time. The government hopes to see at least 50 percent of the program's employees enter the job market one year after finishing the program.
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