SOCIETY
Volunteers wanted for expo
The Taichung City Government is recruiting 20,000 volunteers for next year’s Taichung World Flora Exposition to help visitors at the event, which is to run for almost six months. Prospective volunteers must be at least 16 years old and those with volunteer experience are to be given priority. Once selected, each volunteer will be required to serve at least 60 hours at the expo, which is to run from Nov. 3 next year to April 24, 2019. Applications are to be divided into team and individual categories. A team must have a minimum of 10 members, with applications accepted until Sept. 30. Individual applicants can apply via a Web site set up by the city government starting from Oct. 1.
INDUSTRY
Tsai hopeful on R&D center
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Wednesday expressed hope that German industrial giant Siemens would set up a “smart” machinery research and development (R&D) center in Taiwan to forge closer ties with the local machinery manufacturing sector. Receiving a Siemens delegation led by Cedrik Neike, a member of the managing board of the German firm, Tsai said that the local machinery industry has been working with Siemens on smart manufacturing development and that a move by the company to set up an R&D center in Taiwan would strengthen that cooperation. The nation’s industrial sector has laid a good foundation for the development of information and communications technology, Tsai said, calling on Siemens to utilize Taiwan’s advantages by opening a “smart” machinery hub here. Tsai also expressed hope that the government would have a chance to work with Siemens in new energy development at a time when the nation has set a goal of raising its renewable energy output.
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