EDUCATION
TOEIC aborted mid-test
A nationwide Test of English for International Communications (TOEIC) session was yesterday canceled because the voice recordings did not match the content printed in the test booklets, affecting about 24,000 test-takers. The test started with a listening comprehension test, according to the local organizer of the test. However, when the first recorded question was played, participants reported that the question did not match the options on the answer sheet, the organizer said, adding that it decided to cancel the test and send all participants home. Compensatory measures would be published on the TOEIC Taiwan Web site at 10am today, it said. The recording was sent from the US and the error was the first of its kind since the test was launched in Taiwan, the organizer said.
DRUG PREVENTION
Taipei to focus on campuses
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said his administration would make combating drug use among junior-high school students its top priority next year. Speaking at an anti-drug fair in the city, Ko said the use of illegal drugs is increasing among young students in Taipei. Statistics show that the average age at which residents first use narcotics is below 15 and the youngest drug users are only 12 years old, Ko said, adding that many students try their first illegal drugs between eighth grade and 10th grade. “We have to solve the problem at its root. The drug problem cannot be solved by the police only,” he said, adding that he would focus his anti-drug campaign on campuses and pay extra attention to junior-high schools. According to Ministry of the Interior data, most drug use suspects in 1997 were in their mid-20s, but since 2000, drug use has been most prevalent among people in their early 20s. People aged 18 to 23 now have the highest prevalence of drug use, the ministry said. Last year, the number of drug users aged 12 to 17 was three times as high as in 1997, the data showed.
TOURISM
Alishan rail marks 105 years
The Alishan Forest Railway yesterday celebrated its 105th birthday with activities, performances and a cake in the shape of a steam locomotive at a ceremony at the railway’s Beimen Railway Station. The event, which was organized by the Chiayi Forest District Office, featured stories about the railway told by Jhuci Senior High School’s Alishan Young Ambassadors team and songs by students from the county’s Shihzih Elementary School. Council of Agriculture Minister Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) said that the Alishan Forest Railway and its forestry culture are national treasures in terms of culture, sightseeing and nature conservation.
FREEWAYS
Emergency phones removed
The National Freeway Bureau on Friday announced it is to remove emergency telephone booths along portions of Freeway No. 6 and all of Freeway No. 10 from Jan. 1. The bureau cited the phones’ low usage rates and the omnipresence of cellphones as reasons to remove the booths, eliminating their maintenance costs. The booths in the tunnels of freeway No. 6 will remain, as cellphone reception there is poor, the bureau said in a statement. The National Freeway Bureau earlier this year did away with the telephone booths along freeways No. 2, 4 and 8, as only one call was made from the phones since July 1, 2014. The lack of emergency phones along the three freeways has not had any effect on people’s ability to report emergency situations, the bureau said, adding that they simply used their mobile phones.
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
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
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