Taiwan won two awards at the 16th International Awards for Liveable Communities, held from last Thursday through Monday in Al Ain City, United Arab Emirates.
Globally recognized as the “Green Oscars” and established in 1997, the annual event is endorsed by the UN Environment Programme and jointly held by the International Federation of Parks and Recreation Administration.
The awards are the world’s only international competition that promotes notions of environmental management and the establishment of livable communities.
The competition encourages cities and regions to elevate quality of life by building a dynamic, sustainable and environmentally conscious society.
The Siaolin Village Memorial Park in Siaolin Village (小林) in Greater Kaohsiung’s Jiasian Township (甲仙) won third place in the natural section of the project category, while New Taipei City’s (新北市) Yingge District (鶯歌) bagged the bronze medal in category C (cities with a population of 75,001 to 150,000) of the whole city awards category.
Following the severe devastation brought by Typhoon Morakot on Aug. 8, 2009, Siaolin Village was wiped out and lay buried under mudslides.
More than 600 residents are believed to have been buried alive.
With a respectful attitude toward the natural environment and amid growing community awareness, the Greater Kaohsiung Government and local residents jointly launched a project to construct a memorial park, which was completed in January this year.
The purpose of the memorial park is to console families of victims of the typhoon and to bring hope to the affected areas.
More than 120 projects carried out by 60 cities in 32 countries competed in this year’s project awards category, which recognizes community constructions that are innovative, inspirational to local society and the environment, and that are conducive to sustainable development and raising environmental awareness.
Of the total number of projects, 21 were tendered by Taipei, New Taipei City, Yilan City, Greater Taichung, Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung.
Other countries competing included Singapore, Malaysia, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Italy and the Philippines.
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