TRAVEL
Work holiday quota raised
Taiwan and Germany have increased the annual quota for their reciprocal working holiday program to 300 people from each nation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The new quota was made retroactive to Oct. 11, based on an agreement reached by the two sides on Nov. 13, the ministry said. Germany is the first European country to enter into a working holiday agreement with Taiwan, German Institute Taipei Director-General Martin Eberts said in a statement. A joint statement signed by the two countries on Oct. 11, 2010, tentatively allowed an annual quota of 200 citizens aged 18 to 30 to travel and work in each other’s country for up to 12 months. The two sides decided to increase the number because of the growing popularity of the program, the ministry said.
CULTURE
O-Kai Singers to go on tour
The a capella group O-Kai Singers is to tour four Southeast Asian countries from Thursday to Dec. 4 to showcase the nation’s music and culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The group is to visit Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, giving performances at events organized by the ministry’s representative offices in those countries, it said. The group would show the vitality of young Taiwanese and help to promote Taiwanese culture and music, the ministry added. Founded in 2004, the ensemble, made up of five Aboriginal singers, won three Golden Melody awards last year: The Jury Award, the award for Best Group and their first album, O-Kai A Capella, was honored as the Best Indigenous Album. The album also won the category for best jazz album in last year’s Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards in the US.
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