IMMIGRATION
Dual citizenship considered
The Ministry of the Interior is considering conditionally allowing foreigners to obtain Republic of China (ROC) citizenship without having to renounce their original nationality. Wanda Chang (張琬宜), head of the ministry’s Department of Household Registration Affairs, made the remarks after media reports that a US priest who has lived in Taiwan for the past 50 years is not able to obtain ROC citizenship. Chang said that some legislators have recently proposed abolishing Article 9 of the Nationality Act (國籍法), which requires foreigners to relinquish their original nationalities before applying for ROC citizenship. The ministry would prefer to keep the requirement, but add an exception for people who have made special contributions to the country or outstanding people who fit national development goals, Chang said. Local media reported early this month that a Malaysian woman who was left stateless when her Taiwanese husband died partway through the immigration process. She lived in Taiwan without any valid citizenship for 18 years before finally getting temporary travel documents to return to Malaysia.
CRIME
Pingtung police raid hotels
Pingtung County police on Friday night raided hotels and guesthouses searching for illegal drugs ahead of several high-profile music events in the county. No drugs were found after 40 officers inspected hotels, inns and other locations that could be used to store drugs, the police station in Hengchun Township (恆春) reported. Nearly 100 people have been arrested for drug-related offenses at the Spring Scream and Scream Wave music festivals over the past three years, police said as they urged festivalgoers to obey the law during this year’s events. Hengchun Police Precinct head Chen Ing-fang said that about 500 officers from the Special Police force, military police and Coast Guard Administration will be deployed to maintain order and traffic control during the Spring Scream and the Spring Wave festivals, as well as rock and electronic music concerts at six other locations between April 3 and April 6.
SOCIETY
Crash kills one, injures 16
A head-on collision on Saturday in Taitung County left a flatbed truck driver dead and injured 16 passengers on a tour bus, including 14 Chinese, police said. The accident occurred at about 4pm when a tour bus that had been carrying 21 Chinese tourists was traveling on the South-Link Highway between Greater Kaohsiung and Taitung, police said. The truck was coming from the opposite direction and crashed into a hillside following the collision. The truck driver was thrown from his vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The tour group’s Chinese leader suffered “relatively serious” injuries, while 13 other tourists, the Taiwanese bus driver and the Taiwanese tour guide were slightly injured, police said. The injured were sent to nearby hospitals.
TRAVEL
Work-holiday program open
Young Taiwanese looking to gain work experience while traveling in Canada this year can submit applications for the program starting on Wednesday, the Canadian representative office in Taipei said. The annual reciprocal program allows 1,000 Taiwanese aged 18 to 35 to work and travel in Canada for up to one year in three categories: working holiday, one-year contract of employment and one-year internship for university students. The Taiwan-Canada working holiday agreement took effect in 2010.
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