TRADE
Japan leading fruit importer
Japan has overtaken China to become the largest importer of fruit from Taiwan this year after a Japan-based trading company pledged to purchase 5,100 tonnes of fruit from the nation, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said yesterday. Wismettac Foods Inc president Hiroshi Tsujikawa signed an agreement with the COA in Tokyo to purchase a minimum of 3,500 tonnes of pineapples, 1,500 tonnes of bananas and 100 tonnes of frozen pineapples per year. Japan bought about 56.6 percent of Taiwan’s fruit exports from January to October this year, supplanting China in Taiwan’s fruit sales, COA Deputy Minister Chen Tien-shou (陳添壽) said, adding that Japan bought 28.9 percent of Taiwan’s food exports last year.
WEATHER
Wet weather set to linger
Cool and wet weather is likely to persist today in northern parts of Taiwan due to seasonal northeasterly winds, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. The lowest temperature recorded yesterday in low-lying areas was 15.2°C in Keelung’s Cidu District (七堵) at 7:30am, bureau data showed. Localized showers are expected today in the north and east alongside a slight temperature rise, as the weather in northern Taiwan remains cool and wet, National Central University weather forecaster Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said. Tomorrow, cloudy and sunny skies should prevail throughout Taiwan, with temperatures rebounding significantly, he said. However, another wave of northeasterly winds is forecast for Sunday, bringing occasional showers to northern coastal areas and northeastern Taiwan and pushing the temperatures lower, he added.
LABOR
Employers to pay insurance
About 150,000 live-in migrant caregivers in Taiwan must be covered by their employers for quarterly work-related injury insurance premiums, the Ministry of Labor said as it prepares to send out the latest premium payment notifications. Under the Labor Occupational Hazard Insurance and Protection Act (勞工職業災害保險及保護法), which took effect on May 1, migrant caregivers must be covered by occupational accident insurance against work-related injuries, and the premium must be paid in full by their employers. The premium for live-in caregivers’ insurance has been calculated on a minimum monthly wage of NT$25,250 under the act, which overrides their actual minimum wage of NT$20,000 under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), the ministry said. As a result, the quarterly insurance premium for live-in migrant caregivers is about NT$135, ministry officials said.
LEISURE
Renovated zoo to reopen
Kaohsiung’s Shoushan Zoo is scheduled to reopen on Dec. 16 after the completion of a one-year reconstruction project, featuring greater accessibility for visitors and more facilities for families, the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau said on Wednesday. The zoo, which broke ground on its NT$550 million (US$17.95 million) reconstruction project in August last year, is to feature a 440m-long elevated walkway that connects several animal enclosures, the department said. The skywalk joins four observation corridors from where visitors can view animals up close without disturbing them, and two themed observation points that provide access to capybara and black bears, it said. Improvements have also been made to provide the animals with cleaner and better ventilated living environments, it added.
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