■ Travel
Visa restrictions changed
As Ulan Bator has been added to the list of affected areas of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) by the World Health Organization (WHO), visitors from the Mongolian capital will be required to abide by the government's visa restriction measures applied to these areas. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement yesterday that the WHO's updated information on May 1 has included the Mongolian capital on its list of SARS-affected areas. The government's visa restriction measures on visitors from SARS-affected areas are thus applicable to visitors from Ulan Bator. Effective on April 30, WHO lifted its advisory against non-essential travel to Toronto, Canada, while still listing the Canadian city as SARS-affected area, the statement said. Visitors from Toronto are required to visa restriction measures applied to SARS-affected areas, while travelers from the rest of Canada can proceed with their Taiwanese visa application with a SARS-free health certification, the statement added.
■ Navy
Goodwill visit on track
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said the navy's goodwill visit to Haiti remained on track despite Haitians' earlier panic over the arrival of Taiwanese sailors who they believed might carry severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). "Through the explanations by the Haitian government and our embassy, the local press has begun a relatively objective coverage of the fleet's visit, and the goodwill fleet has arrived Haiti as scheduled," said the ministry in a statement. The local press said the Haitian president has received hundreds of sailors on May 1 as scheduled, the statement said.
■ WTO
MOFA commissions study
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has commissioned the Chung-hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER) to set up an international trade and economic studies center to help the government deal with affairs related with the WTO, ministry officials said on Friday. Under a contract signed between the ministry and CIER, the officials said, the future studies center will provide the government with far-sighted and strategic study reports on dealing with disputes under the WTO framework and legal consultations. It will also organize activities for promoting WTO regulations and training officials to deal with affairs related with the world trade regulatory body. Since its accession to the WTO in January of last year, Taiwan has faced a series of issues that should be settled through bilateral and multilateral negotiations, they said
■ Vietnam
Police arrest smugglers
Vietnamese police have arrested two Taiwanese for smuggling more than 100 cellphones into the country, Vietnamese media said yesterday. Chang Heng-san (張橫山) and Tsai Fu-jung (蔡富忠) were stopped by customs officers at Tan Son Nhat international airport in Ho Chi Minh city last Sunday after they landed from a flight from Taiwan, the Tuoi Tre newspaper said. Customs officials found the cellphones of different models in their luggage. The pair admitted to police they had smuggled a large volume of the handsets into Vietnam. They had sometimes brought up to three consignments in a day to the country without being discovered, the paper said. Police also arrested their Vietnamese partner in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen Thi Phuong Trang, and seized nearly 200 cellphones at her house.
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