■ LITERATURE
Fair to showcase France
Next year’s Taipei International Book Exhibition, scheduled to open on Jan. 27, will play host to a record-setting number of French guests and events as it showcases France as the theme country. The Taipei Book Fair Foundation, the organizer of Asia’s biggest book fair, said France was chosen as the theme country because books in French and those translated from French into Chinese have enjoyed increasing popularity in Taiwan in recent years. Foundation chairman Linden Lin (林載爵) said France would send 40 people to participate at the exhibition, including renowned writers Muriel Barbery and Philippe Claudel, and the number of special activities being held to celebrate the theme country would also be the highest in the show’s history. Some 2,500 French publications will be on display and the National Library of France is preparing to exhibit some of its volumes from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The fair will take place from Jan. 27 to Feb. 1 at the Taipei World Trade Center’s three exhibition halls.
■ TRADE
WTO terms explained
Seven years after the nation joined the WTO, Taiwan has unveiled the first reference book of terms related to and associated with the regulatory body. The book, Decoding WTO — WTO Glossary, was compiled and published by the Chung Hwa Institution for Economic Research at the behest of the Bureau of Foreign Trade. Bureau Deputy Director-General Hsu Chun-fang (徐純芳) said the 372-page book includes more than 6.7 million terms and should become a handy and useful reference for civil servants, academics and professionals. The book’s editor, Hsu Tseng-chi (徐遵慈), said the reference work took a full year to compile. Hsu Tseng-chi first focused on trade-related entries so that the public could grasp WTO jargon.
■ EMPLOYMENT
Activists fear for jobs
The government should reconsider its plan to ease restrictions on hiring foreign caregivers and maids because such a move could deprive local middle-aged and older women of job opportunities, an advocacy group said. The Council of Labor Affairs is considering allowing families that have two members in their 80s or one member older than 90 and a toddler under one year to apply to hire foreign caregivers. “On the surface, the proposed liberalization is not large, but in effect, its impact on local women, particularly those in middle or senior age groups, would be great,” said Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉), chairman of the Peng Wan-ju Foundation. Lin said foreign caregivers usually have to do all sorts of household chores, such as cleaning the house, washing clothes and cooking, jobs that in many cases are currently done by middle-aged local women. As a result, middle-aged and senior women’s job opportunities could be affected, Lin said.
■ ECONOMY
Ministry to convene meeting
The Ministry of Economic Affairs will convene an inter-ministerial meeting before the end of the year to discuss ways of further improving Taiwan’s investment climate for capital from China. Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Huang Chung-chiu (黃重球) said yesterday the ministry would invite officials from the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Education for discussions that are expected to focus on simplification of entry-exit procedures for Chinese investors and their employees, greater access to Taiwan’s schools and other matters, Huang said.
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