SOCIETY
Movable bridge to open
The nation’s first movable bridge, a bascule bridge with a single-leaf opening structure designed to allow the passage of keelboats, will open in Pingtung County on March 27 and is expected to promote tourism in southern Taiwan. Resembling the Erasmus Bridge in the Netherlands, the 579m long, 17m high bridge is expected to become a landmark of the county’s Dapeng Bay National Scenic Area, Tourism Bureau officials said. Because the bridge design is keelboat-friendly, the bureau said, it hopes to attract keelboat sailors from all over the world, thereby promoting local sports tourism. To celebrate the inauguration of the NT$1.8 billion (US$61 million) bridge, which has taken three years to construct, the bureau said it would hold a series of biking, canoeing and keelboat sailing events starting late this month.
TRAVEL
E-reading zone opens
For passengers waiting for their flights at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, a duty-free shop’s new e-reading zone might cure their boredom. Passengers can read, free of charge, 400 e-books at the reading zone, with genres ranging from National Geographic and Elle magazines to Sherlock Holmes and children’s novels, Everrich Duty Free Shop said earlier this week. Besides e-books, the waiting room has more than 2,000 second-hand paper books on the shelves, with Chinese and English titles.
SOCIETY
Wu relieved at job situation
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) appeared relieved yesterday as he noted a significant decrease in visitor numbers at job fairs since the start of this year, a situation he said indicated that employment prospects have improved. Wu was attending a career exposition organized by the Council of Labor Affairs in Taichung. It was the first large-scale hiring event held so far this year, with more than 80 employers offering more than 7,000 positions. Although the fair still drew a large turnout, it was smaller than attendance levels at similar events held in the previous two years. Wu said the situation at this event was clearly different from those in the past year or so, when huge crowds of worried-looking jobseekers would flood into every job fair looking desperately for an opportunity. After the country’s gradual economic recovery, which started last year, employers are now facing difficulty finding workers, he said, pledging that the government would continue to help those who are still out of work find jobs.
ENVIRONMENT
Lilies fail to bloom
Only 40 percent of lily fields have blossomed so far this year because of the recent cold weather, according to organizers of the annual Calla Lily Festival in Zhuzihu valley in northern Taipei’s Yangmingshan National Park, which opened on Friday. The flowers are expected to be in full bloom either late this month or early next month, officials of the Taipei City Department of Economic Development said. During the one-month festival that will run through April 25, the city government has prepared a variety of activities to help people enjoy the blossoming lilies, including a flower art-centered design contest and a series of concerts at local flower farms, as well as tours to farms in the Zhuzihu area. Detailed information — in Chinese only — about the activities and public transport services is available on the festival’s Web site at www.callalily.com.tw.
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