As we bid farewell to 2021, news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) pointed out that even though 2021 was marred by the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters, it has brought with it some strange and fantastic news. The AFP has chosen a few highlights for us to recap.
Here are two whacky stories in 2021 that AFP came up with:
‧ “Salmon chaos”
Photo: Liberty Times 照片：自由時報
Japanese sushi chain Sushiro offered free sushi for people whose name contained the Chinese characters for salmon, causing a wave of name changing to break out across Taiwan.
‧ “Four weddings”
A bank employee and his wife married four times and divorced three times over a period of 37 days. The man applied for marriage leave four times to get a total of 32 paid holidays, but the bank only granted him eight days for the first period of marriage leave. Believing that the bank owed him 24 days of leave, he filed a complaint to Taipei City’s Department of Labor. The bank was found to have violated labor laws.
(TRANSLATED BY RITA WANG, TAIPEI TIMES)
二○二一年結束之際，《法新社》指出，雖然今年受到疫情和許多天災侵擾，但仍有一些美妙有趣的新聞，他們也選出幾則新聞帶大家回顧。
以下列出兩則《法新社》選出的二○二一年新奇報導：
‧ 「鮭魚之亂」
連鎖壽司「壽司郎」台灣店為名字中有「鮭魚」中文字的人提供優惠，造成台灣人瘋狂改名。
‧ 「四場婚禮」
台灣一名銀行員在三十七天內連續跟同一個人結婚四次、離婚三次，並向公司申請四次婚假共三十二天，但銀行只准第一次結婚的八天假，行員認為公司欠他二十四天假，因此向北市勞動局提出檢舉，銀行被認為違法。
(自由時報)
Many consumers are guilty of filling drawers or closets with old laptops, cellphones, fitness trackers and other electronic devices once they are no longer needed. It’s hard to know where to recycle such items, or it seems costly and inconvenient to do so. The world generates millions of tons of electronic waste — also called e-waste — each year. According to the UN’s most recent estimate, people worldwide produced 62 million metric tons of e-waste in 2022, and only about 22 percent of it was properly recycled. The US’ Environmental Protection Agency estimates that less than a quarter of e-waste is
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