Several Taiwanese hotels are to join communities around the world in observing Earth Hour by turning off their lights for an hour from 8:30pm to 9:30pm today.
The annual global event is held toward the end of March and encourages individuals, communities and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour as a symbol of their commitment to the sustainable future of the planet.
Le Meridien Taipei hotel, Humble House Taipei, Sheraton Grande Taipei Hotel, Grand Hyatt Taipei Hotel and W Taipei Hotel, as well as Palais de Chine Hotel Taipei and Fleur de Chine Hotel, which are affiliated with LDC Hotels and Resorts Group, have announced that they would take part in Earth Hour for a sustainable future.
LDC Hotels and Resorts Group said it would also encourage its guests to turn off their mobile phones for the day and instead send postcards to their relatives and friends. As an incentive, the hotel is to hold a raffle among the guests who participate in the event, with a prize of dinner for two.
Meanwhile, Sheraton Grande Taipei Hotel is to offer two Taiwan beers for the price of one to its guests to encourage them to spend Earth Hour in the lobby instead of their rooms.
Earth Hour, organized by the World Wildlife Fund, is in its 10th year.
The campaign is aimed at empowering the public and sending the message that people can help change the environment for the better by altering their behavior.
On March 28 last year, millions of people in more than 7,000 cities across a record 172 nations and territories took part in the world’s largest grassroots movement for environmental protection.
More than 1,400 landmarks switched off their lights during Earth Hour last year, including the Taipei 101, the Empire State Building, the UN headquarters, the Eiffel Tower, the Burj Khalifa, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Hong Kong’s skyscrapers.
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