The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) should step up efforts to persuade countries enjoying visa-free entry to Taiwan to offer reciprocal measures, a report by the Legislative Yuan said yesterday.
Taiwan offers visa-exemption privileges to people from 38 countries and customs areas, while only six afford the same treatment to Taiwanese nationals, the Legislature’s Budgetary Research Center said in a report after reviewing the budget that MOFA’s Bureau of Consular Affairs submitted for next year.
The UK, Liechtenstein, Ireland, Japan, South Korea and Singapore allow Taiwanese visitors to enter without visas for a stay ranging from 30 days to 180 days.
The bureau said seeking reciprocal privileges from more of those 38 countries and customs areas, such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France and Italy, would be one of its main tasks next year.
Bureau officials said these countries and customs areas were more frequent destinations for outbound Taiwanese tourists and businessmen than the 30 countries, principally in Central and South America, that permit Taiwanese passport holders to enter without applying for visas in advance.
The center, therefore, asked MOFA to persuade these countries and customs areas to offer visa-free treatment to Taiwanese travelers.
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:
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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