Germany and Colombia have joined 22 countries to issue travel warnings to their nationals regarding trips to Taiwan in light of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
The ministry put the 24 countries into three categories depending on the level of the travel advisories issued to their citizens.
Six countries have advised their citizens not to travel to Taiwan for any reason, the ministry said.
Another nine countries have advised their nationals to postpone their trips to Taipei, the ministry said.
The third category included another nine countries that have advised their nationals to postpone non-essential trips to Taiwan, the ministry said.
The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs on May 2 recommended that German nationals to refrain from any unnecessary journeys to Taiwan in view of the SARS outbreak, according to the ministry's Web site.
According to the Canadian government's travel health advisory last Friday, Health Canada continues to recommend that Canadians planning to travel here or China should defer all travel until further notice.
"Health Canada recommends alternate routing be considered, when possible, if a traveler is transiting through the People's Republic of China or Taiwan," the announcement said.
According to the travel advisory issued by the Singaporean ministry of health on Wednesday, Singaporean nationals were advised to "avoid travel to other SARS affected areas -- Taiwan, Toronto and Mongolia, unless absolutely necessary."
But according to the Central News Agency (CNA) report from Tokyo yesterday, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday night upgraded its travel warning to Japanese nationals regarding journeys to Taiwan.
Japan has four travel warning categories: take cautious measures while traveling, defer unnecessary travels, defer all travel and evacuate from the region, according to the ministry's Web site.
Japan in early April advised its nationals to be cautious during their trips to Taiwan, while the latest travel advisory recommended that Japanese nationals reconsider the necessity of traveling to Taipei, the CNA report from Tokyo said.
Meanwhile, Lee Chen-hsiung (
Some Taiwanese fishing boats, which have been active in the Indian Ocean next to Mauritius, have found their lives severely affected by the country's visa ban policy, Lee said.
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