■ Society
Marathon boosts charities
This year's ING Taipei International Marathon raised NT$1.8 million for charity, with the funds divided among five charities, according to a spokesman for ING Antai, which organized the event. The marathon has been held since 2004 and this year's event attracted a record 110,000 runners. Of the funds, NT$440,000 was donated to the Taiwan Foundation for Rare Disorders, NT$350,000 to the Chinese Taipei Road Running Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired and NT$370,000 each to the Preparatory Committee for the 2009 Taipei Deaflympics Games and the Chinese Taipei Sports Association of the Deaf. ING also donated NT$270,000 to World Vision International on behalf of participants in the Kid's Mini Marathon category to help disadvantaged children around the world.
■ Society
`Three links' to be expanded
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday announced that more people will be allowed to take advantage of the "small three links" between Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu and China's Fujian Province. MAC Vice Chairman Johnnason Liu (劉德勳) said the council made the decision after examining the effect of the policy which was implemented in 2001. However, no timetable has been announced as to when the new measures would take effect. The "small three links" refer to shipping, postal and trade links between the islands and Fujian. So far, only residents of the three islands are allowed to travel directly to China via the links. Liu said that under the new measures, veterans not from Fujian will be able to go there via the small three links and associations of industry and commerce could hold exhibitions or meetings via the three small links.
■ Immigration
Immigration office switch
The Immigration Office under the National Police Agency (NPA), Ministry of the Interior (MOI), will become the Immigration Administration directly under the MOI on Tuesday. The new administration will handle all visa and Alien Resident Certificate (ARC)-related matters for foreigners. In Taipei, such duties were previously handled by the Foreign Affairs Division of the Taipei City Police Department until yesterday. Taipei-based foreign visitors and residents in need of visa or ARC-related services should visit the administration's office at 15 Guangzhou Street in Zhongzheng District, Taipei (北市中正區廣州街十五號) beginning on Tuesday. Offices will also be opening in the 24 other county and municipal jurisdictions nationwide, according to the ministry.
■ Environment
Ministry unveils `Land Plan'
The Ministry of the Interior announced yesterday that it would submit two bills to the Cabinet to improve land and coastal management nationwide. Saying that the country's "impressive economic development" had come at the cost of the environment in many cases, Deputy Interior Minister Lin Mei-chu (林美珠) said the time had come to standardize land management policy. The ministry's "Land Plan" calls for "environmental impact" fees to be paid by land developers and for stricter management of protected areas and national parks, according to a ministry press release. The coastal management bill, meanwhile, seeks to preserve fishery and other ocean resources, ministry officials said. Under the bill, coastal ecosystems would be better protected by facilitating coordination between the Coast Guard, local-level government and other relevant authorities.
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