■ Travel
Visa service to resume
With the SARS threat having eased, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday announced it will lift a ban on landing visas for Hong Kong residents. Service for 14-day landing visas will resume at midnight on Monday, the MAC said in a press release. Noting that underlying SARS danger still exists, the MAC said Hong Kong visitors with landing visas would nonetheless be required to take their temperature twice a day during their stay as well as agree to provide documents certifying that they don't have SARS symptoms.
■ Foreign Affairs
Minister defends trip
Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien (簡又新) yesterday clarified a media report on his recent trip to France, defending his decision to bring three secretaries and his wife with him for the week-long trip. Chien admitted bringing three secretaries with him for a regional meeting with Taiwanese diplomats. He said it was normal to bring secretaries with him for such a trip. Chien said one of his secretaries continued on a private trip in Europe after the rest of the team returned to Taiwan, but this trip was paid for by the secretary.
■ Charity
Aid recipients give back
Five individuals who benefited from World Vision Taiwan's charity programs have been returning the help they received by assisting in a charity sales drive set up by the organization in Pingtung City. The five consist of a man whose son was helped by World Vision's Child Sponsor program, as well as four teenagers who are attending school under the organization's sponsorship. The five helped in the drive by moving around the city and selling toothpaste, gloves, bags, towels, torches and other items donated by sponsors. Money raised from the sales will be used to help children in Africa affected by famine.
■ Crime
Bodies of laborers found
The bodies of two Vietnamese laborers were found in Nantou County, police reported yesterday. Police said that they received reports at 9am that the bodies of two men had been dumped beside a bridge in Nantou's Shuili Village, bordering the township of Chichi. The police said they suspect the two men were beaten to death as both bodies displayed bruises to the head and chest area and one of them had a broken leg. There were also blood stains and signs of a scuffle at the scene, they said. The two men were 26 years old and Vietnamese, based on the documents found on the bodies.
■ Drugs
Police land heroin haul
Police in Vietnam arrested a man after discovering 2.18kg of heroin in two boxes purporting to contain loudspeakers that were being sent by air to Taiwan, state media said yesterday. Luc Quoc Quoi was detained on Friday at Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat international airport after the heroin haul he was trying to send to Taiwan was discovered by customs officers. The boxes were addressed to a Taiwanese man named Lin Chung-ho. Quoi said he had been given the heroin by another man who had instructed him to send it to Lin, the Tuoi Tre newspaper said. Police believe the drugs originated from Cambodia and were smuggled across the border into Vietnam. Further investigation into the trafficking network was underway, the daily 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
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