SOCIETY
Redress for RCA workers
Former workers of the defunct Radio Corp of America (RCA) factory in what is now Taoyuan who died from cancer due to exposure to toxic chemicals, as well as their next of kin, are eligible to receive at least NT$200,000 each in occupational hazard compensation from the Labor Insurance Fund, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said yesterday. The Bureau of Labor Insurance has notified 69 former RCA workers with cancer who received the ordinary accident compensation that they are eligible for the occupational hazard pay, but they would have to deduct the amount they have already received, the council said. Those who are entitled to less than NT$200,000 in occupational hazard compensation would be paid to make up the difference, it added. The Taipei District Court ruled 43 of the factory’s former employees died of cancer as a result of the toxic pollution the facility emitted and 35 are eligible for occupational hazard payouts and subsidies.
MEDIA
Singer makes face list
Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), a Taiwanese member of the South Korean girl group Twice, was ranked 13th on an annual list of the 100 Most Beautiful Faces released on Sunday by US film review site TC Candler. Chou, 16, is the only Taiwanese on this year’s list. South Korean singer Nana from the girl group After School placed first for the second year in a row. Israeli actress and model Gal Gadot ranked second and British model Jourdan Dunn came in third. TC Candler said the list, which has been compiled since 1990, listens to “the hundreds of thousands of suggestions submitted every year, and tries to put together a list representative of the modern ideal of beauty.”
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