TRAVEL
Serbian visas now faster
Serbia has simplified its visa application procedure for Taiwanese to allow same-day processing, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday. The new procedure was implemented earlier this month, according to James Lee (李光章), director-general of the ministry’s Department of European Affairs. Taiwanese applying for a Serbian visa must hold a passport that is valid for at least 90 days from the date of visa issuance, Lee said. They must also submit a photo, round-trip tickets and hotel reservation information or a letter of invitation from a Serbian and can then obtain a multiple-entry visa valid for six months, Lee said. Previously, the process for visas to Balkan countries was more complicated and often took as long as six weeks, he said.
SPACE
Schools identify asteroids
Taiwanese high-school students participating in an international asteroid search found 16 new asteroids, according to the National Central University. Fifty-nine asteroids were identified during the Pan-STARRS Asteroid Search Campaign from March 15 to April 19, and Taiwanese schools found nearly a third of them, the university said. Five Taiwanese high schools were among the 40 schools from seven countries that took part in the event, hosted by the International Astronomical Search Collaboration. During the campaign, the students were supplied with space images not yet analyzed by scientists and asked to locate asteroids with the use of the computer software Astrometrica and send the reports to the Minor Planet Center. If the students identified an asteroid that was not in the center’s database, the asteroid was given a temporary number, the university said, adding that five of the asteroids found by the students were given these numbers.
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