Taiwanese who plan to visit the US during the summer might delay their travel to take advantage of visa-waiver privileges, which are expected in October, a tour operator said yesterday.
Anthony Liao (廖文澄), general manager of Taiwan-based Phoenix Tours, said that after Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) revealed a probable timetable for the visa-free program, Republic of China (ROC) nationals would likely delay their travel plans to save on visa fees.
On Friday, Wu said Taiwan was likely to be included in the US visa-waiver program in October.
US visa-waiver status should help boost business for local travel agencies in the final quarter of this year and the whole of next year, Liao said.
The number of Taiwanese traveling to the US has been on the decline over the past decade because of the tighter security measures imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and because of the increased visa fee, he said.
Growth in the number of ROC passport holders traveling to the US is estimated at 50 percent after visa-waiver privileges take effect, he said.
Based on previous experience, the number of Taiwanese traveling to countries that gave ROC nationals visa-free treatment grew by at least 30 percent after the visa-free status was granted.
Share prices of Phoenix Tours and Star Travel — the only two listed and over-the-counter companies on the Taiwan Stock Exchange — increased by 3.04 percent and 2.32 percent respectively yesterday.
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