WEATHER
Cold snap set to ease
The nation was in the grip of a cold front yesterday as the mercury plunged to 9.9°C in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Tamsui District (淡水) in the early morning, with 10°C recorded in Hsinchu and 10.1°C in Greater Taichung’s Wuchi (梧棲), the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. In Chiayi, where the temperatures dipped on Saturday to 6.2°C — a record low for an area on the plains this year — the mercury stood at 10.9°C in the morning. Since the cold front is not expected to ease until today, forecasters predicted temperatures between 14°C and 15°C for northern Taiwan and 18°C to 20°C for the rest of the nation, adding that lower temperatures are possible on the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu. Occasional rain was forecast for the northern, eastern and mountainous areas.
EMPLOYMENT
Caregivers earn higher wages
Indonesian caregivers and housemaids earn higher wages in Taiwan than in Singapore and Hong Kong, according to data released by the Malaysia National Association of Employment Agencies (PIKAP). Indonesian caregivers and housemaids receive monthly wages of 2,200 Malaysian ringgit (US$667) in Taiwan, compared with 1,700 ringgit in Hong Kong and 1,200 ringgit in Singapore, according to PIKAP. Meanwhile, Singapore charges the workers 6,500 ringgit in broker fees, while the cost is between 6,500 and 7,000 ringgit in Taiwan and Hong Kong, according to the data. There are currently more than 208,000 foreign “social welfare” workers, such as caregivers and housemaids, in Taiwan, with Indonesian nationals accounting for about 78 percent of those workers, according to statistics from the Council of Labor Affairs.
TECHNOLOGY
Work starts in science park
The first enterprise to move into the Yilan division of the Hsinchu Science Park, nicknamed Taiwan’s Silicon Valley, started work on Saturday to build an operations center at the new science park in the nation’s northeast. OMNI Calibration Laboratory held a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the beginning to construction of a “mobile laboratory” at the science park. Yilan County Commissioner Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) expressed his hope that OMNI’s move would attract more local and foreign companies in related industry sectors to move into the Yilan division. In 2004, the administration of the government-run Hsinchu Science Park selected an old airport in Yilan City as the construction site for its planned Yilan division. The 71 hectare site is to be developed into the nation’s first communications technology services-oriented industrial park.
CULTURE
Film festival in two cities
Taipei and Greater Kaohsiung are to jointly host next year’s Revenge Film Festival set to begin on Friday, showcasing a series of films that discuss the topic of revenge. The festival is to screen the Japanese detective films Phone Call to the Bar and The Detective Is in the Bar, as well as South Korean crime drama New World and thriller Montage. Phone Call to the Bar, directed by Hajime Hashimoto, garnered seven nominations at last year’s Japan Academy Prize. Meanwhile, New World, directed by Park Hoon-jung, has received praise from Film Business Asia as the “best played and most gripping Korean gangster movie since Yu Ha’s A Dirty Carnival. The festival is to run until Jan. 16 at the Hsin Hsin Showtime Cinemas in Taipei, the Banciao Showtime Cinemas in New Taipei City (新北市) and the Kaohsiung Film Archive.
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