Friday, February 18, 2011

陳光標:公司有狀況 不影響行善

【經濟日報╱記者邱莞仁/台北-重慶連線報導】

2011.02.19 02:36 am


大陸首善陳光標經營的黃埔再生資源公司有三個月沒生意做,但他強調,不影響高調行善,他說,5月間來台的計畫不會改變,還要捐款給台灣兩所大學。
(本報系資料庫)
年初風光來台發紅包的大陸首善陳光標,傳出企業陷入困境,已有三個多月沒接過業務,靠吃老本度日。陳光標昨(18)日接受本報專訪時坦承,公司經營的確有些狀況,但不影響他進行慈善活動,5月來台的規劃也不會改變,他計劃對台灣兩所知名大學各捐贈新台幣千萬元,支持大學生從事兩岸文化交流。

以下是專訪內容紀要:

問:目前公司經營情況如何,外傳員工薪資減半?

答:公司從去年11月開始到現在,的確沒接過任何一項業務,我是個想得開的人,公司沒有貸款,現在還能靠過去賺的錢,保障未來三年內幾千名員工生活無虞。

現在4,600多名員工,人均月薪人民幣4,000元(約新台幣1.7萬元),大陸媒體報導說我只給員工一半的薪水是錯誤的。我當時的意思是,如果三年後公司的業務還沒有起色,員工可能薪水就要減半。

問:造成業務困難的原因是什麼?

答:2008年我在廈門就說過,「陳光標要賺錢比吃大便還難」,這是個賺錢很難的企業。不管在台灣還是大陸,大家都說陳光標是靠政府幫忙才能賺錢,還有人說我送錢給官員,我告訴你,誰要能舉報出來,我可以到他指定的地方捐人民幣100萬元。

陳光標的公司從2003年開始,從來沒有接受過政府一分錢的幫助。我做大型建築垃圾回收,很多業務只能平過,有95%以上的生意都是二手或三手,幾乎沒有做過一手生意。

最近兩年我參加社會活動時間太多,70%的時間在社會活動,30%的時間發展公司,疏於和這些拿到一手業務的老闆交流,導致他們把拿到的業務轉給其他人。

我做慈善捐款從來沒有幫公司帶來直接效益,只是為我拿到一大堆感謝證書。我也很困惑,是不是因為我太高調,所以不受地方政府歡迎。

問:未來考慮低調捐款或減少捐款數目嗎?

答:一直沒拿到業務,一定會影響企業的發展,接下來我會大量減少參與社會活動,多和這些拿到一手業務的老闆交流。

不過,今天我把話講絕了,那怕今天我只賺人民幣100萬元,也要拿出50萬來捐款。我這個人一向高調,低調不起來的,我已經看到慈善事業所發揮的傳播作用。

這幾天我在重慶探訪70歲以上的孤寡老人,也是敲鑼打鼓的發紅包,總共對160名75到106歲的老人家,發出人民幣13萬元(約新台幣57.8萬元)。

在我的號召下,有兩位重慶企業家也說要跟我學「裸捐」,其他人也跟我捐款,總共號招捐款1,450萬元(約新台幣6,452.4萬元)。

問:5月來台計畫會改變嗎?

答:5月我一定會再來台灣,這次不一定會發紅包,改做公益活動。

我計畫到台灣兩所知名大學演講,要跟寶島台灣的大學生,暢談首善的成長過程與人生經歷。我也會捐款給這兩所大學,用於大學生進行兩岸文化交流,每一所學校至少可拿到新台幣千萬元以上捐款。

捐款全部都是讓台灣大學生使用,我也會入鄉隨俗,全數捐給學校基金做處理。目前還不方便公開這兩所學校,我也會呼籲大陸企業家,多多關注兩岸大學生的文化交流。

【2011/02/19 經濟日報】@ http://udn.com/

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

倫斯斐出回憶錄 狠批老同事

【聯合報╱編譯李致嫻/法新社華盛頓7日電】

2011.02.09 03:04 am


美國前國防部長倫斯斐。
(法新社)
美國前國防部長倫斯斐(Donald Rumsfeld)7日發表回憶錄「知與未知」(Known and Unknown,暫譯),在書中坦承當初調度伊拉克軍隊的決定可能是錯的,還猛批前國務卿賴斯和鮑爾等舊日同僚。

倫斯斐在書中為自己處理伊戰的方式辯駁。前總統布希曾表示,2003年出兵攻下伊拉克後迅速減少駐伊美軍的決策,是「伊戰最嚴重的錯誤」。當初力主此議的倫斯斐,卻不太贊同布希這個說法。

2006年辭去國防部長的倫斯斐說:「我沒有足夠的自信去說(布希的說法)是對的,只是有這個可能。」倫斯斐在布希政府擔任國防部長6年。

倫斯斐在回憶錄當中寫道,他並不後悔領軍攻打伊拉克與阿富汗,不過也坦承布希政府誤判伊拉克擁有大規模消滅性武器是個錯誤。他將多數伊拉克戰爭的失敗及嚴重流血事件,歸咎於「多頭馬車的官僚體系」。

倫斯斐也在書中批評昔日同僚,他說前國家安全顧問和國務卿賴斯(Condoleezza Rice)缺乏在政府高層管理單位服務的經驗,因而阻礙了她籌備重要會議的能力,前國務卿鮑爾(Colin Powell)則是管理技巧很差,無法管理好下屬。

倫斯斐還表示,許多媒體報導稱鮑爾反對攻打伊拉克,但當時布希召開的多場討論伊拉克戰爭會議中,就他自己親身的觀察,鮑爾從來沒有當面向布希表示反對伊拉克戰爭。

【2011/02/09 聯合報】@ http://udn.com/

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

An H.I.V. Strategy Invites Addicts In

An H.I.V. Strategy Invites Addicts In
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/health/08vancouver.html?ref=science&pagewanted=print

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — At 12 tables, in front of 12 mirrors, a dozen people are fussing intently in raptures of self-absorption, like chorus line members applying makeup in a dressing room.

But these people are drug addicts, injecting themselves with whatever they just bought on the street — under the eyes of a nurse here at Insite, the only “safe injection site” in North America.

“You can tell she just shot cocaine,” Thomas Kerr, an AIDS expert who does studies at the center, said of one young woman who keeps readjusting her tight tube top. “The way she’s fidgeting, moving her hands over her face — she’s tweaking.”

Insite, situated on the worst block of an area once home to the fastest-growing AIDS epidemic in North America, is one reason Vancouver is succeeding in lowering new AIDS infection rates while many other cities are only getting worse.

By offering clean needles and aggressively testing and treating those who may be infected with H.I.V., Vancouver is offering proof that an idea that was once controversial actually works: Widespread treatment, while expensive, protects not just individuals but the whole community.

Because antiretroviral medications lower the amount of virus in the blood, those taking them are estimated to be 90 percent less infective.

Pioneering work by the British Columbia Center for Excellence in H.I.V./AIDS at St. Paul’s Hospital here demonstrated that getting most of the infected onto medication could drive down the whole community’s rate of new infections.

According to one of the center’s studies, financed by the United States National Institutes of Health, from 1996 to 2009 the number of British Columbians taking the medication increased more than sixfold — to 5,413, an estimated 80 percent of those with H.I.V. The number of annual new infections dropped by 52 percent. This happened even as testing increased and syphilis rates kept rising, indicating that people were not switching in droves to condoms or abstinence.

Studies in San Francisco and Taiwan found similar results. So last July the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency made “test and treat” its official goal — although it acknowledged that it is only a dream, since global AIDS budgets aren’t big enough to buy medication even for all those hovering near death.

It is also only a dream in the United States. Much of the American epidemic is now concentrated in poor black and Latino neighborhoods, where health insurance is less common and many avoid testing for fear of being stigmatized. However, the federal government is conducting a three-year study of “test and treat” in the Bronx and the District of Columbia.

Because the medication can have unpleasant side effects, many American doctors delay prescribing it until their patients have low counts of CD4 cells, a sign that their immune systems are weakening. Doctors often feel a greater commitment to each patient’s comfort than to the abstract idea of fewer infections in a given city. But Vancouver is a different story. Canadian medical care is free, doctors are expected to pursue public health goals and Vancouver’s provincial health department aggressively hunts for people to test.

“In 2004, I rebelled when the government people started to say, ‘We need to get control over the budget for your program,’ ” said Dr. Julio S. G. Montaner, director of the St. Paul’s program and a former president of the International AIDS Society. “I went to the ministries of finance and health and told them: The best-kept secret in this field is that treatment is prevention. You need to let us treat more people, not less. And it worked.”

Even $50 million spent on drugs, he said, ultimately saves $300 million because roughly 400 people a year avoid infection. (The estimated lifetime cost of treating a Canadian with AIDS is $750,000.)

Dr. Montaner also pushed for the creation of Insite. There, addicts get clean needles, which they are not allowed to share with anyone else.

In return, they are safe from robbery, which is common on the streets outside, and from arrest. Insite has a special exemption from Canada’s narcotics laws.

They also know that if they overdose, they won’t die. In Insite’s seven years of operation, there have been more than 1,000 overdoses inside, but not a single death. (Mild overdoses are treated with oxygen, serious ones with Narcan, an opiate blocker.)

Also, the staff nurses give medical care: They drain and bandage abscesses from dirty needles, hand out condoms, offer gynecological exams and treatment for sexual diseases, refer addicts to treatment and offer AIDS tests.

“We feel very positive about Insite,” said Dr. Patricia Daly, chief public health officer for Vancouver Coastal Health, the branch of the health system that covers this part of the country. “There are fewer overdose deaths, less open drug use on the street, and we know it’s brought more people into detox.”

While the city’s large gay community has more infected individuals, the drug-using community is harder to reach. Many addicts are mentally ill or barely educated; many are homeless. About a quarter are Indians, who have historical reasons to view government testing with suspicion.

Also, addicts are often so consumed with finding their next hit of heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine that they ignore everything else and will sell anything, including their antiretrovirals.

“I love a lot of the people here,” said Hugh Lampkin, 48 and a heroin addict since he was 16, as he led a tour of the Downtown Eastside neighborhood. He is vice president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, an addicts’ organization formed in 1997 during a wave of overdose deaths. “You get to know them, they’re really decent. But you always have to watch yourself. Everybody is predatory. Drugs make you that way.”

Downtown Eastside is a shock even to someone familiar with the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s or the Tenderloin in San Francisco. Even on a balmy fall afternoon, having 5,000 addicts concentrated in a small neighborhood can make a walk feel like a visit to the set of a zombie movie. On its core blocks, dozens of people are shuffling or staggering, flinching with cocaine tics, scratching scabs. Except for the young women dressed to lure customers for sex, many are in dirt-streaked clothing that hangs from their emaciated frames. Drugs and cash are openly exchanged.

The alleys are worse — people squat to suck on crack pipes, openly undress to find veins or lie down so friends can inject their jugulars — a practice, known as “jugging,” that Insite discourages. The puddles, smelling of urine and feces, are sometimes drawn up into syringes, Mr. Lampkin says — one reason that heart infections hospitalize more addicts than overdoses do.

Even in this milieu, where almost everyone admits being a current or former drug user, denial about AIDS is rife.

Admitting that you are H.I.V.-positive, said Ann Livingston, a founder of the drug users’ network, means ostracism: forget about sex, and forget about sharing drugs.

Also, Ms. Livingston said, many users are in and out of prison, where it can be dangerous to admit being infected.

The city began handing out free needles in the late 1980s after studies concluded that the practice lowered rates of hepatitis and AIDS. A 1997 study in The Lancet found that in 29 cities worldwide with needle exchange, H.I.V. infection dropped 6 percent a year among drug injectors, while in 51 cities without, it rose by about 6 percent. A Vancouver study found it did the same. In 2003, at the insistence of a new mayor who was a former police officer and chief coroner, Vancouver went further, opening Insite as a safe haven supervised by nurses.

About 800 injections take place there daily. However, officials think that is only 5 percent of the injections in the city and want permission from the national government to open more sites. “People can’t wait to shoot up,” said Jim Jones, who was handing out syringes at a city-financed “needle depot” in a Downtown Eastside alley. At Insite, Mr. Jones said, “they may have to wait 20 minutes, half an hour. When you’re dope-sick, that’s too long.”

Mr. Lampkin agreed. “People grab a rig, go two feet from here and do their smash,” he said. “Or they don’t even cook up, they shake and bake: pour their drugs right in the syringe, shake it with water, and try to heat the barrel. Shake and bake is how you get endocarditis.”

At Insite, clients are left alone, unless they ask for help. Bad vision is common, and many users have veins clogged with scar tissue. The nurses can help find a vein, “but they cannot push the plunger,” Dr. Kerr said.

Needle litter has decreased in the area, and Insite’s backers assert that violence has gone down, too. Female addicts are often attacked for their drugs or money, Dr. Montaner explained, so they must get men to protect them, which often means payment with sex, which increases infection risk.

Although the Canadian Medical Association and the public health officers of Canada’s 17 largest cities have endorsed supervised sites, no more have opened because the national government refuses to grant more exemptions to the federal narcotics laws.

Insite opened when the Liberal Party was in power. The Conservative-led government that came to power in 2006 has sued to shut it. Local courts have refused to close it, accepting the city’s argument that an addict’s need for opiates is like a diabetic’s for insulin and that a citizen’s right to health — recognized in Canada’s version of the Bill of Rights — outweighs narcotics law.

Canada’s Supreme Court is to take up the case in May.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

過年心力交瘁 收假前有撇步

【聯合晚報╱彭宣雅】

2011.02.06 01:41 pm


春節假期近尾聲,民眾將陸續回到工作崗位,精神科醫師發現,以往每到春節過後,門診患者竟多了一到兩成。醫師分析,過年作息嚴重受到干擾、睡眠不足、壓力過大,都是民眾求助精神科的原因。建議民眾盡可能放鬆心情,到戶外散步、做運動,可減少年後情緒失控的機會發生。

準備年菜 送往迎來 災難啊~

耕莘醫院精神科醫師楊聰財表示,新年是中國人最重要的節日,但對許多人來說,卻是可怕的夢魘。例如不少媽媽要準備新年的飯菜,要採買、烹煮,一大家子吃完之後還需要清洗;加上許久未見的親朋好友、三姑六婆總是愛比較,比年終獎金多寡、比老公成就高低、比孩子成績好壞…。

於是,整個年假裡,許多職業婦女不僅娘家、婆家四處趕場奔波,還處於這種高度壓力與疲憊之下,收假了又要面對職場上複雜的工作,完全沒休息到,往往就成了年後第一批精神拉警報的人。

楊聰財曾與臨床上求診的婦女深談,發現她們過年時,其實只想找個安靜的地方好好自己躲起來休息,但每年宛如大拜拜的場面總是避免不了,不僅父母公婆需要「按耐」,親戚們的閒言閒語、比來比去,更是讓媽媽們內心受傷的最主要原因,因此才會視過年為災難。

玩得太兇 過度疲勞 焦慮呀~

於是很多人最後過度疲勞,不得不求助精神科醫師,醫師則會視患者狀況提供情緒穩定劑、輔助睡眠的安眠藥,略微休息一、兩周後,多會逐漸恢復正常。

楊聰財說,除了媽媽們是高危險群之外,不少民眾過年期間日夜顛倒玩樂、打麻將 ,一整個年假精神不濟、睡眠不足、大吃大喝,情緒放得太鬆,也會讓人年後覺得提不起精神、怒氣重、出現焦慮等症狀。

因此精神科醫師建議民眾,要逐漸回復原有的生活步調,民眾一定要趁收假前,在夜裡睡滿7小時,利用午後多做運動出出汗,心情放鬆,或把家裡整理一下,都是情緒轉換的好方式,也可以幫助民眾心情回復穩定。

【2011/02/06 聯合晚報】@ http://udn.com/

Friday, February 4, 2011

個性雞婆 應徵加分

【經濟日報╱記者洪凱音/台北報導】

2011.02.04 08:33 am


社會新鮮人前進金融業,「宅男」、「宅女」請止步,銀行人資主管表示,金融業激烈太過競爭,服務品質是致勝關鍵,最喜愛具備「古道熱腸」特質的人選加入服務團隊。

公股銀行主管指出,即使是當櫃檯人員,過去只遵從SOP(標準作業流程)時代已經過去,甚至最好具備「雞婆」的個性,不僅要能與客戶閒聊,例如家裡的狗生了幾隻小狗等,非常關心客戶的生活點滴,當客戶有大筆匯款動作時,也要主動詢問,提醒風險及掌握客戶資金調度用途。

主管指出,有幾次客戶有大筆(上百萬元)匯款,目的是要投資別家銀行的基金,若當下發現、馬上留下客戶、轉介到財富管理銀行,就能避免客戶流失,甚至攔截客戶遇到詐騙的情況,發揮保護客戶的效果。

三商銀(華南、彰化、第一)今年都有大舉招考計畫,主管表示,第一階段的筆試包括國、英文共同科目,還有貨幣銀行學概要、會計學概要、法律常識等專業科目,能通過第一關考試,基本專業知識絕對沒有問題。

而挑選「古道熱腸」特質的人選,重點在第二關的面試,主考官的評分內容除反應能力、專業問題外,也會從儀表、談吐、言詞來評斷,基本上,具備宅男、宅女特質的人選,因為不擅與人溝通,入選機率十分低。

【2011/02/04 經濟日報】@ http://udn.com/