■TRAVEL
‘Taiwan’ passports touted
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday suggested people replacing their old passports choose one that bears the name “Taiwan,” on the front to avoid trouble when traveling as the “Republic of China” is often confused with the “People’s Republic of China.” “Holding the new passport with the word ‘Taiwan’ on the cover will make it much easier for travelers to pass through immigration,” said James Lee (李光章), a MOFA official. The UK and Ireland granted Taiwanese citizens visa-free entry in March and July last year respectively, but there have been some incidents of Taiwanese holding old versions of passports being questioned when traveling to the two countries as they were mistaken for Chinese, Lee said.
■TRANSPORT
Suhua report planned
The Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) said yesterday it is to submit the environmental impact report for its proposed plan to improve the conditions of the Suhua Highway in September. The plan, reviewed by the Council of Economic Planning and Development, has gained approval from the Executive Yuan. The DGH said the report is expected to address the issue of 18-wheelers, which account for approximately 50 percent of traffic on the highway. The DGH said it is working with the Taiwan Railway Administration and the Hualien Harbor Bureau to help curb the number of large trucks using the highway.
■CULTURE
‘Scream’ numbers drop
The total number of people attending this year’s Spring Scream music festival, which ended on Monday, was down from last year, organizers and local hotels said. Tens of thousands of music fans crowd into Kenting each year for the festival, the longest-running music event in the country. Most of the evidence of lower attendance this year, however, seemed anecdotal. Shen Kuan-yuan (沈光遠), general manager of Friendly Dog Entertainment which hosted the “Spring Wave” and “Spring Wave Hengchun Electronic Party,” said it sold about 15,000 tickets this year. He estimated the concerts this year might only break even, unlike last year, which were profitable. Many shop owners in Kenting also said a lot of people attending the festival did not stay overnight. Shen suggested that one of the factors in the perceived decline was that tourists from Hong Kong and Macau increased this year, prompting many Taiwanese fans unable to book guesthouses to stay at home. On the other hand, 20,000 tickets to the actual Spring Scream event were sold this year, more than last year, the festival’s founders said. Spring Scream, which began with two stages and 30 bands in 1995, has grown into a six-stage show featuring 200 local and foreign bands this year.
■FAMILY
Thousands sweep tombs
Around 6,000 members of the same family gathered for the recent Tomb Sweeping Festival, a report said yesterday. The Yeh family traveled from as far as the US, Australia and Brazil to Taoyuan on Monday, the Chinese-language Apple Daily said. The crowd thronged a square in front of the family tomb and surrounding roads, burning nearly 10 tonnes of paper money and setting off hundreds of firecrackers to honor the dead. Taiwanese believe burning paper money and everything from cars to computers made of paper will ensure their ancestors are comfortable in the afterlife, and lighting firecrackers will scare off evil spirits.
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