■ Labor Affairs
Indonesian ban to end
A ban on the recruitment of new Indonesian workers is likely to end next month, a Taiwanese official in Jakarta said yesterday. Taipei Economic and Trade Office spokesman Derek Hsu said Council of Labor Affairs Chairwoman Chen Chu (陳菊) and her Indonesian counterpart, Jacob Nuwa Wea, held talks in Jakarta on Thursday, agreeing that Jakarta could resume send-ing new workers by March. Recruitment of Indonesian workers was suspended in August 2002, after Jakarta failed to address problems involving high fees charged by labor brokers and runa-way workers to the satisfac-tion of Taiwanese officials.
■ Society
Ex-DJ must leave country
Former ICRT DJ Charles Mack will be sent out of
the country under escort before Feb. 6, police officials announced yesterday. The officials said Mack faces deportation under Article 34 of the Immigration Law (入出國移民法) because he tested positive for syphilis. The announcement came after Mack turned himself in to the Taipei Foreign Affairs Police yesterday evening. Mack, who became famous under his DJ nickname "Chocolate," became the focus of police attention after his Taiwanese wife accused him of spreading syphilis.
■ Diplomacy
Mongolian group visits south
A 43-member Mongolian trade delegation visited the Kaohsiung yesterday to promote bilateral trade, cul-tural and tourism exchanges. The group visited the Kao-hsiung City Council. Council Speaker Tsai Chien-hsing (蔡見興) discussed the city's industrial development and cultural features. The dele-gation then attended a seminar with business and industry representatives. The delegation is co-sponsoring
a Mongolian carnival to be held in front of the Presi-dential Office building tomorrow, which will feature Mongolian wrestling.
■ Culture
Hakka exhibitions open
The Taipei Hakka Affairs Commission exhibition on the Hakka "miracle booth" (聖蹟亭) opens today in Taipei. A miracle booth was built specifically to burn papers with words on them. The exhibition features a replica booth, a map with locations of extant booths and video clips of Hakka elders familiar with the history of the booths. The exhibition will run through Sept 30 at 3F, 19, Lane 157, Hsinsheng S. Rd. Meanwhile, the Council of Hakka Affairs is holding an exhibition this weekend on modern Hakka music at the Tunnan branch of Eslite bookstore. The exhibition opened yesterday and ends tomorrow. The council has also organized an online Hakka music database (music.ihakka.net).
■ Society
Lantern fest opens Feb. 5
This year's Lantern Festival will kick off on Feb. 5 at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial with the Monkey King (西遊記) on the main lantern and backdrop, the Taipei City Government announced yesterday. The big lantern in the memorial's plaza will be in the shape of the Monkey King holding a globe in his hands with colorful lights to symbolize Taiwan making its way into the international community, said the city officials. An international area will feature the lanterns designed in Britain, Thai-land, Hong Kong, Australia and Japan. The festival ends Feb.15. The city government will give away about 100,000 small monkey-shaped lanterns between Feb. 5 and Feb. 8 at the entrances of the memorial hall and the National Concert Hall.
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