EDUCATION
Charity wants book donors
Several private organizations are collaborating in a campaign to get the public to donate books to children from disadvantaged families in remote areas, the Child Welfare League Foundation, one of the participating groups, said yesterday. The charitable foundation said it is cooperating with TAAZE, an online bookstore, to collect children’s books so that they can be distributed to schools in remote areas, who will then hand them out to the disadvantaged children. Hi-Life, a major convenience store chain, has agreed to let its stores serve as book collection drops. Using its experience and expertise, TAAZE will screen the books to make sure they are appropriate for schoolchildren, foundation deputy chief executive Chen Lli-ju (陳麗如) said. Pelican, a delivery company, will transport and deliver the donated books for free, Chen said. People who wish to give more than 100 books at a time can ask Pelican to make a home pick-up, Chen said.
EMPLOYMENT
More workers furloughed
The number of workers furloughed by their employers has risen by 487 to 7,446 in the past two weeks, according to statistics released by the Council of Labor Affairs yesterday. As of Wednesday, workers from 75 companies had agreed with their employers to take unpaid leave, with 7,391 of them presently on furlough, statistics showed. The number has increased from Feb. 15 when 6,959 workers from 73 companies had agreed to furlough arrangements with their employers, with 6,904 of them on furloughs at that time, according to the council.
SPORTS
Basketball camp initiated
The government is planning to launch a basketball camp over the summer in an effort to train talented young players after the recent success of NBA sensation Jeremy Lin (林書豪) has created a fresh surge of basketball fever in Taiwan, an education official said yesterday. Wang Chun-chuan (王俊權), director of the Ministry of Education’s Physical Education Department, said the ministry would select basketball players through two draft systems — the High School Basketball League and the University Basketball Association — for the summer camp, which will provide intensive training to young athletes. The government will also set up training programs in elementary schools and high schools, and will provide basketball courses in universities and colleges, said Sports Affairs Council Deputy Minister Rosa Chien (錢薇娟), a former basketball star.
DIPLOMACY
Hau to visit European cities
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) will depart tomorrow for a three-city fact-finding tour of Europe that will focus on urban revitalization projects, city government officials said yesterday. The 10-day trip will take Hau to London, Barcelona and Hamburg, where he will visit various revitalization sites, according to a statement released by the city government. He is hoping to learn from those cities’ experiences in organizing large-scale events, as a warm-up for Taipei’s bid to be World Design Capital in 2016 and to ensure the success of the 2017 Universiade, the statement said. In London, Hau will visit Covent Garden, St Pancras railway station and the King’s Cross-St Pancras tube station. His itinerary in Barcelona will include historical buildings, traditional markets, boulevards, riverfronts and old industrial parks. Hau is scheduled to wrap up his visit on March 13 and return to Taiwan on March 15.
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