SOCIETY
Japanese mascot to visit fest
The popular Japanese mascot “Funassyi,” the pear fairy, is set to greet fans with its signature spirited jumps at the Taipei International Comics and Animation Festival next month. The yellow pear-shaped mascot, who topped a ranking of the favorite character mascots in Japan last year, will appear at the festival on Feb. 6, said Top-Insight International Co, the Taiwanese publisher that invited the mascot. “Funassyi” is the promotional mascot for Funabashi in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture. It is known for its high-pitched voice, jumps and energetic personality. It has close to 500,000 followers on Twitter and has appeared on highly rated Japanese TV programs such as the Red and White Year-End Song Festival. The second Taipei International Comics and Animation Festival is to run from Tuesday to Saturday next week at the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall. It is scheduled to feature more than 50 graphic artists, voice actors and authors from Taiwan and Japan.
SOCIETY
NIA touts foreigners hotline
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) is encouraging more foreign nationals and spouses to take advantage of a multilingual hotline service launched earlier this year, to help improve their quality of life. The new service consolidates two hotlines for foreign spouses and foreigners, and is part of the agency’s efforts to enhance service quality and improve efficiency. A group of new immigrants are manning the hotlines, providing consultations in seven languages: Mandarin, English, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai and Cambodian, according to the agency. Since the hotline began operating on Jan. 1, staff have offered consultations in a wide range of fields, including visa issues and finding temporary accommodation for pets while away, the agency said. The hotline — 0800-024-111 — provides a 24-hour service every day of the year, the agency said.
WEATHER
Temperatures set to drop
The Central Weather Bureau forecast a temperature drop of between 6?C and 7?C as the result of the arrival of a cold front. Showers and daytime temperatures of about 18?C to 19?C were expected in the north and in Yilan County. The mercury in Hualien and Taitung counties, as well as in central and southern Taiwan, will hover at about 22?C to 25?C, the bureau said. However, the temperature will vary more than 11?C from day to night in western and northeastern Taiwan and 15?C in Hualien and Taitung counties, according to the bureau. Meanwhile, poor air quality was reported yesterday in central and southern Taiwan as a high level of particulates was being carried by wind, the Environmental Protection Administration said.
ENTERTAINMENT
Avril Lavigne sets concert
Canadian singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne is set to visit Taiwan for the fourth time to hold a concert in March. The Girlfriend singer will perform in Taipei on March 16, said If Entertainment, one of the concert organizers. The concert was originally scheduled to take place at the Taipei City Hakka Cultural Park, but organizers said recently they are re-evaluating the venue and will announce the location for the concert later. Ticket sales have also been postponed, but the concert will proceed as scheduled in March, it said.
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