■ Travel
Japan to extend visa waver
Japan's ruling coalition has decided to propose that the parliament make a special law to allow Taiwanese to enter the country visa-free after the Aichi Expo ends in September. Japan currently offers visa-free treatment to Taiwanese tourists during the Expo, which ends Sept. 25. At a meeting Wednesday, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Komeido resolved to ask their lawmakers to put forward a special bill making such treatment permanent. Taiwan is the second-largest source of foreign visitors to Japan after South Korea. In February, a special law was passed to allow Taiwanese people to enter for 90 days without a visa during the Aichi Expo. The law went into effect March 11. According to the Taiwan Visitors Association, almost 740,000 Taiwanese visited Japan last year and the new measure is expected to boost that number.
■ Politics
Wang swears by Sun
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) swore by the nation's founding father Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) yesterday that he is against Taiwanese independence and will uphold the rights of the Republic of China (ROC). Accompanied by supporters, Wang went to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei to pay his respects to the nation's founder on the 60 anniversary of the end of war against Japanese aggression and pledged in front of the statue of Sun to oppose Taiwanese independence, the establishment of a new constitution, changing the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) name or rectifying the national title of Taiwan and pledged to defend the sovereign rights the ROC should he become KMT chairman.
■ Weather
Heavy rain warning issued
The approach of a tropical low pressure system from the South China Sea yesterday prompted heavy rain warnings by the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) yesterday. Officials said that residents in the western, northern and northeastern parts of the country should expect rain over the next few days. Thicker clouds have caused temperatures to fall, forecasters said, with Taipei recording a high of 34.4?C yesterday.
■ Crime
Japanese deported for porn
A Japanese man was sent home yesterday for allegedly operating pornographic TV companies in Taiwan and beaming programs by satellite to countries across Asia, the Criminal Investigation Bureau said. Shuichi Mogi, who used to work for a pornographic TV operation linked to a yakuza gang, was escorted home by three Japanese policemen, the bureau said in a statement. Mogi was arrested last October in a joint investigation involving police in Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines. He is suspected of setting up two companies in Taipei since 2002 and obtaining two satellite channels in 2003 to broadcast multilingual porn programs. Some 300 pornographic videotapes, a box of DVDs, six computer hard-drives, a modem and satellite equipment were seized when he was arrested.
■ Crime
Man killed in Cambodia
A Taiwanese businessman who ran a tea shop in Phnom Penh was shot dead inside his restaurant, Cambodian police said yesterday. Lu Y Jen, 34, the owner of Paris Bubble Tea, was shot in the chest and throat early Wednesday and died in a hospital, a senior police officer said. Police suspected the killing was motivated by jealousy over the success of Lu's business.
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