■TRAVEL
BTCO to stop passport work
From May 17, UK passport applications for British nationals will no longer be handled by the British Trade and Cultural Office (BTCO) and will need to be sent directly by the applicant to a regional passport processing center in Hong Kong, the UK’s representative office in Taiwan announced yesterday. The office will no longer accept passport applications from British nationals, said the BTCO, Britain’s official authority in Taiwan in the absence of bilateral diplomatic ties. Previously, the BTCO acted as a middleman for British passport applications in Taipei, accepting the applications, sending them to the issuing authorities in Hong Kong, and then issuing the passport to the applicant. The BTCO said the changes are part of a global initiative to streamline the issuance of passports overseas. The Passport Processing Center in Hong Kong, which will produce and return passports directly to applicants in Taiwan, aims to issue all new passports within 10 working days, the office said. If British nationals need to travel urgently, however, the BTCO will still be able to issue emergency travel documents.
■ WATER
Kaohsiung set for rationing
Water rationing measures might be implemented in Kaohsiung from late next month because of a serious drought in the southern part of the country, Water Resources Agency (WRA) officials said yesterday. WRA Director-General Yang Wei-fu (楊偉甫) said the WRA had expected normal water supplies to continue into mid-June in the Kaohsiung and Pingtung areas and late June in the Tainan area. However, water reserves in southern Taiwan are diminishing faster than expected, with almost no rainfall in the Kaohsiung and Pingtung areas in recent months, Yang said. If the drought continues, water rationing measures will have to be enforced in Kaohsiung beginning late next month, he said, urging residents to conserve water.
■ TOURISM
Alishan flower visitors down
Road damage has taken a heavy toll on travel services in the Alishan area, causing the number of visitors to the mountain resort during this year’s spring flower season to drop to a 27-year low, according statistics released by the Alishan Highway Toll Station show. The statistics showed only 102,853 people visited the Alishan National Scenic Area between March 15 and Thursday, the lowest number for the period since the inauguration of the Alishan Highway in 1983. A toll station official attributed the low number mainly to the suspension of services on the Alishan alpine railway in the wake of Typhoon Morakot in August last year.
■ ESPIONAGE
Man indicted for spying
A Taiwanese businessman was indicted by the Shihlin Prosecutors’ Office on Thursday on suspicion spying for China, according to the indictment released the same day. Ho Chih-chiang (何志強), a China-based Taiwanese businessman, was recruited by China’s national security authorities in 2007 to collect Taiwanese national security secrets in return for financial subsidies and other privileges, the indictment said. Ho returned to Taiwan and tried to recruit a Taiwan National Security Bureau officer to serve as a spy and collect information related to the government’s policies on Falun Gong, Tibetan independence, Japan and diplomacy, between December 2008 and February this year it said. Ho was indicted on charges of bribery and of violating laws on national security and the protection of national secrets.
AGENCIES
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
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
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