■ Travel
Passports to improve service
Taiwanese living and traveling abroad who hold the new passport will enjoy better service from the nation's representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Eugene Chien (簡又新) said in a written report submitted to the Legislative Yuan yesterday. Chien said his ministry has required its overseas offices to enhance service and assistance to those people holding the new passport in the face of robust pressure from Beijing, which has demanded that other countries deny entry or departure to travelers holding the new passport, which has the word "Taiwan" on the cover. The word was added to help customs authorities better distinguish Republic of China passports from those of the PRC, a move which Chien said was in no way political. Passport applications increased by 21 percent during the period from its issuance day on Sept. 1 to Sept. 25 over the year-earlier level, an indication that the response to the new passport has been positive, Chien said in the report.
■ Health
Mosquito battle launched
Kaohsiung County officials in charge of public health and environmental protection are taking steps to clean up the breeding grounds of mosquitoes in four villages after a case of dengue fever was reported in a district in Kaohsiung City. Hsieh Mei-chun, an official of the county's Public Health Bureau said yesterday that more than 50 workers have begun to clean up mosquito-breeding grounds in the villages of Tashe, Jenwu, Chiaotou and Tzeguang. Residents have been asked to clean up their gardens and yards to help prevent any outbreak of the disease. There was an epidemic of dengue fever in Kaohsiung County last year.
■ Crime
Illegal prostitute numbers up
The number of Chinese prostitutes has soared this year although the overall number of women entering from abroad to engage in the sex trade declined, the National Police Administration reported yesterday. According to police tallies, the number of Chinese prostitutes who entered Taiwan via human-trafficking rings between January and August this year jumped by 22 percent, or 327 persons, accounting for 40.42 percent of the 1,544 foreign women arrested for soliciting in the first eight months of the year. In the same period last year, the number of Chinese prostitutes made up only 18.5 percent of all foreign prostitutes arrested by police, officials noted. A total of 1,544 foreign women were found by police to have entered the country illegally to engage in prostitution in the first eight months of this year, 59 fewer than the 1,603 recorded in the same period last year.
■ Diplomacy
Lu urges help for Malawi
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) said yesterday that she will launch a campaign to sponsor Malawian children so that they will get better care. She made the remarks when she hosted a luncheon in Taoyuan County in honor of Malawian President Bakili Muluzi and his entourage. Lu lauded Muluzi for devoting himself to his country's democracy and progress during his 10 years in office. She said that Muluzi has been a close friend of Taiwan, noting that he has instructed his nation's ambassador to the UN each year to speak out for the Republic of China's cause when the UN holds its annual general assembly. Such steadfast support is touching, she 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