SOCIETY
Taipei to allow gay rentals
The Taipei City Government is processing a regulatory amendment that would allow registered same-sex couples to rent public housing units, a city official said on Sunday. The amendment has been approved by the city and is soon to enter the next stage which is consulting public opinion on the proposal, Department of Urban Development division chief Chien Se-fang (簡瑟芳) said. The amendment would then be reviewed by the Taipei City Council in May, before being promulgated, Chien said. The public housing units would be allocated based on the size of a household, he said. Since Taipei began allowing the registration of same-sex couples in June 2015, the number of couples registering has reached 298, of which 55 are male and 243 are female, city government data showed.
SOCIETY
Young Japanese grateful
A group of Japanese students on Sunday expressed thanks for the aid that Taiwan provided to their country after it was hit by a massive earthquake on March 11, 2011. At a cultural event in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水), the students invited the audience to don yukatas — light-weight casual kimonos — and fold paper cranes. The event, dubbed “Japan-Taiwan Bonds of Heart,” featured exhibits on Japanese culture and religions, and included music, singing and dance performances. It was the sixth consecutive year that the group, called the “Thanking Taiwan Activity Commission,” had organized such an event to express the Japanese people’s gratitude to Taiwan for donating more than ¥20 billion (US$175.92 million) in cash and other relief materials to victims of the earthquake and tsunami.
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