POLITICS
Ma’s online journal ends
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) weekly online journal will end this month in preparation for a more diversified platform on which Ma can interact with the public, Presidential Office spokesman Fan Chiang Tai-chi (范姜泰基) said on Wednesday. The weekly online journal, which was launched in July 2009 during the global financial crisis and about 14 months after Ma took office in 2008, will have its final installment tomorrow, Fan Chiang said.
POLITICS
Vote on session date today
Legislators will vote today on a date for the opening of the new legislative session after failing to reach an agreement on the issue during cross-party negotiations. The latest negotiations on the matter became bogged down again yesterday after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) refused to yield to the opposition Taiwan Solidarity Union’s demand (TSU) not to block a TSU proposal on a constitutional amendment. KMT legislative caucus whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) said a vote would be held this morning to resolve the issue of the session’s opening. The opening cannot be delayed further, as the Constitution clearly stipulates that the new session should begin this month, Lin said. Legislators will most likely convene on Feb. 24 for the new session, he said. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said the DPP was in favor of convening the session as soon as possible, Pan said.
ECONOMY
Furloughs drop 41%
The number of workers on furlough has dropped by 41 percent to 6,959 in the past two weeks, according to statistics released by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) yesterday. As of Wednesday, those workers from 73 companies had reached agreements with their employers to take unpaid leave, with 6,904 of them currently on furlough, according to the statistics. The number represented a decrease from Jan. 31, when 11,946 workers from 87 companies had agreed to furlough arrangements with their employers, with 11,891 of them on furlough at that time. The latest figure is the lowest since Nov. 15, and the first time since Dec. 15 that the number of such workers has dropped to below 10,000. The jobless rate fell to more than a three-year low of 4.18 percent in December last year, according to statistics released by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
ECONOMY
Youth jobs data released
More than 16,000 people aged 20 to 25 who have less than one year’s work experience were hunting for their ideal jobs from June last year to the end of last month, according to an online survey released on Wednesday. The yes123 job bank said a total of 48,000 people in the age group were applying for jobs online during the period, about 30 percent of whom were unable to find any jobs or sent out job applications while employed. Recent graduates normally have difficulty competing in the job market because they have less experience, said the job bank’s public relations deputy manager, Yang Shun-chin (楊舜欽). On the other hand, small or medium-sized firms, despite offering generous employee benefits, have difficulty finding suitable candidates because young job seekers do not like to work for them, Yang said. Job seekers have also shown little interest in working in the flat panel, solar power, DRAM and LED sectors, which have reported massive losses recently, he said. Yang advised people to look for jobs based on their professional skills, personalities and interests.
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