■ TRAVEL
Hong Kong relaxes rules
Hong Kong’s Immigration Department yesterday announced relaxed rules for entry to Hong Kong for travelers who hold Republic of China passports. Taiwan residents holding a valid Mainland Travel Permit for Taiwan Residents (commonly known as Taibaozheng) with a valid entry/exit endorsement for China may now enter Hong Kong as a visitor and stay for up to seven days, irrespective of whether they are transiting through Hong Kong to or from China or only visiting Hong Kong, provided normal immigration requirements are met. Those wishing to stay longer should apply through their airline or travel agency for a single or multiple-entry permit, allowing them to stay for up to 30 days in Hong Kong. Visas can be applied for online. The limit was raised from 14 days earlier this year and the previous limit of two online visa applications within a 30-day period has been scrapped. Details can be found online at www.immd.gov.hk.
■ HEALTH
Aboriginal kids attend course
In order to make health information more readily available in remote Aboriginal communities, the Department of Health (DOH) invited 120 elementary schoolchildren from Wulai Township (烏來), Taipei County, Fusing Township (復興), Taoyuan County, and Nanao (南澳) and Datong (大同) townships in Ilan County to a two-day training session in which professionals from the Centers for Disease Control, the National Bureau of Controlled Drugs and the National Health Insurance Bureau will teach them about common diseases and which medicines to use. The children will also visit medical and health facilities. Department of Health Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) said yesterday that, four years after the program started, public health conditions have improved in communities with children who have taken part in the program.
■ TOURISM
Festival promoted overseas
As the Tung Blossom Festival has become one of the most popular Hakka events in the country, the Council for Hakka Affairs will begin promoting it abroad. “The beautiful scenery of mountains and hills dotted with millions of small white Tung blossoms not only attracts millions of domestic visitors each year, but has also caught the attention of tourists from other countries,” Council of Hakka Affairs Director Huang Yu-chen (黃玉振) said at a news conference announcing the beginning of this year’s festival. “To attract more visitors, we’ve put up ads for the festival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and the international airports in Beijing and Tokyo.” The festival is expected to attract more than 10 million visitors, Huang said. Details on the festival can be found by visiting www.tung.hakka.gov.tw.
■ LEGAL
Lu files an injunction
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday filed an injunction against the Journalist to force the magazine to comply with a court ruling that it must apologize for wrongfully accusing her of spreading rumors about an alleged extra-marital affair between then president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his interpreter. Lu’s lawyers Hung Kwei-san (洪貴參) and Chen Chun-wen (陳俊文) filed the document on behalf of the former vice president against the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Li Ming-chun (李明駿), former editor-in-chief of the Chinese-language China Times Wang Chien-chuang (王健壯), China Times reporter Yang Shu-mei (楊舒媚) and three others, a press release by Lu’s office 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