■ DIPLOMACY
BTCO has new address
The British Trade and Cultural Office (BTCO) in Taipei is moving to a new location, which will open next Tuesday, the BTCO announced in a press release on Tuesday. The new office will be on the 26th floor of the President International Tower, No. 9-11, Songgao Road, Xinyi District, Taipei. The office will be closed tomorrow and Monday because of the move and no visa applications will be processed during this time, it said. The office also announced that a two to three-day delay in visa processing and return of passports should be expected. Applicants scheduled to travel this month are advised to apply for their visas early to avoid last minute delays.
■ TRANSPORTATION
Inspections save lives
The death rate for tour bus accidents dropped 20 percent because of intensive inspection efforts, the Directorate General of Highways (DGH) said yesterday. DGH Deputy Director General Chen Chun-hsiung (陳俊雄) said that since January last year, the directorate had dispatched officials to randomly inspect large-size tour buses at freeway service areas, dangerous road sections and tourist attractions. A total of 141,183 tour bus were inspected last year, with 3,345 violations, he said. In 28 cases, the tour buses had to be immediately impounded. In another case, a tour bus carrying 28 tourists from Singapore and Malaysia was held because its license plate had been revoked. Chen said the directorate would continue to enforce the measure this year and will require tour bus drivers to receive training.
■ EVENTS
Kaohsiung ready for festival
The Kaohsiung Lantern Festival will begin on Feb. 16, a Bureau of Development official said yesterday. The 16-day festival is organized by the bureau to mark the Feb. 21 Lantern Festival, which marks the end of Lunar New Year celebrations and this year falls on Feb. 7. The official said the theme for this year's festival was "love and happiness," for which the organizer has designed a large variety of "world class" activities. Kaohsiung Harbor will be the principal venue, in line with the efforts to boost the city's image as an international harbor city. The activities will include concerts, fireworks, water dance performances, foreign dance performances and a lantern exhibition, the official said. The main lantern will be placed at sea near the harbor, making it the country's first-ever lantern installed at sea for festival celebrations, the official said.
■ WEATHER
Cold front to persist
The entire country will see wet and cold weather until Saturday, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. Bureau meteorologists said that in the next three days, low temperatures would range between 12oC in the north and 16oC in the south, with daytime highs ranging from 13oC in the northeast to 21oC in the southeast. The mercury is expected to rise on Saturday, as the cold air mass affecting the nation begins to disperse. After Saturday, rainfall is also expected to decrease, the bureau said. Daytime temperatures in the north could rise to more than 20oC starting on Saturday, while central and southern areas can expect sunlight with daytime temperatures reaching a high of 24oC.
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