FOREIGN RELATIONS
VWP expected this year
The US is expected to extend the its visa-waiver program (VWP) to Taiwan in the second half of this year, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday. “Granting Taiwan visa-waiver privileges will make Taiwanese more willing to travel to the US. If we can solve the issue by the second half of this year, it will also help improve the balance of trade between the two countries,” he said when meeting with a US delegation led by US Representative Mike Honda at the Presidential Office. Taiwan was nominated for the program in December last year, pending a review of the nation’s homeland security and immigration system by the US government. If Taiwan is admitted to the VWP, it will become the fifth Asian country to enter the program after Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Brunei.
TOURISM
Foreign visitors hit record
The number of international visitors to Taiwan soared to a record 990,000 in the first two months of this year, according to the latest statistics released by the Tourism Bureau. The figure represents year-on-year growth of 15.4 percent, with a daily average of 16,000 visitors from more than 10 countries, the statistics showed. The highest growth was among Chinese visitors (39.9 percent), who accounted for 304,000 of the total. Japanese visitors were in second place, with 9.2 percent growth and making up 227,000 of the total. Double-digit growth was also recorded for visitors from other countries and areas, including Hong Kong, Macau, the US, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, France and South Korea.
MARITIME
Sailor rescued off Japan
A Taiwanese sailor who was aboard a missing Hong Kong-registered cargo ship has been rescued by the Japanese coast guard, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman James Chang (章計平) said on Thursday. The vessel’s eleven crew members, including the Taiwanese, were rescued from two lifeboats that were floating in waters more than 100km southwest of the Japanese island of Amami Oshima, Chang said, citing officials at Taiwan’s representative office in Fukuoka, Japan. According to Japanese media reports, none of the rescued crewmen had sustained injuries and they all seemed to be in good spirits. Chang said the Taiwanese crewman is expected to return to Taiwan after Japanese authorities finalize their investigation into the cause of the sinking. The 4,143-tonne New Lucky VII was carrying lumber from Papua New Guinea to China when it lost contact in rough seas on Tuesday, according to a report by NHK.
SOCIETY
Student wins US prize
A Taiwanese student in the US won the Best Commercial prize at the 33rd College Television Awards earlier this month. Cheng Kai-chung (鄭凱中), a student at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, was selected for his commercial titled “Voodoo Bear.” Cheng’s commercial uses black humor and features an ordinary office worker who tries to outwit his co-workers, but cannot. “Voodoo Bear” won from a field of about 400 entries. Cheng, the first Asian student to win in the category, said he hoped to inspire people through his work and to one day make a movie that uses comedy to highlight serious issues. There were more than 1,000 entries in 12 categories this year at the annual awards, which honor the best student-produced work in video, digital and film production in the US.
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