An initiative was launched in Taipei yesterday to provide temporary housing for children of African and Middle Eastern refugees at the Lampedusa Immigrant Reception Center in Italy.
The launch of the Casa di Love initiative, a joint project between Lifestyle Global Enterprises Inc, the Rising People Foundation and the Hsieh Hsu-ying Culture and Arts Foundation, is to build prefabricated houses for at least 100 refugee children awaiting processing on the Italian island of Lampedusa.
The center is a major midway checkpoint on the northbound maritime route for people trying to reach Europe and close to 100,000 people are awaiting processing on the 20.2km2 island, said William Hsieh (謝貞德), the founder of Lifestyle Global Enterprises and the foundation.
Photo: Chen Ping-hung, Taipei Times
Hsieh said he became aware of the European refugee crisis through the Association of World Citizens and he launched the initiative because conditions for the refugees have deteriorated following terrorist attacks in France and Belgium.
The drowning of Alan Kurdi off the coast of Turkey and the global attention it generated showed that refugee children are in desperate need for help, he said, adding that Lampedusa Mayor Giuseppina “Giusi” Nicolini deserves international recognition for her courage in accepting the refugees, in spite of the island’s normal population of 6,304.
Hsieh said project manager Daniel Ku (顧卓雄) had conducted an inspection of the island to verify that it is the place with the most urgent need for help.
Hsieh said Nicolini had endorsed the project with the comment: “This is exactly what we need right now.”
The project is to spend NT$12 million (US$371,069) over a three-year period on pre-fabricated houses for refugee children, with the goal of housing at least 100 individuals and with the first group of houses to be completed by fall this year, Ku said.
The project is recruiting university students to volunteer during their summer and winter vacations to care for refugee children and teach them about Taiwan, with the requirement that volunteers must enjoy cooking, dancing and singing, Ku said.
Lampedusa City Council speaker Rosangela Mannino said at the event that the project had demonstrated the value of international cooperation and that Taiwan is now well-known to Lampedusa, adding that she expressed her gratitude to Taiwan on behalf of the island.
The project announced during the event an additional program with the Amaltea youth academy in Prato, Italy, to bring together the children of new immigrants and single parents for the advancement of cross-cultural understanding and the integration of refugees into Italian society.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the