The nation has a list of 52 suspected terrorists who have been barred from entering the country, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Lee Hsiang-chou (李翔宙) yesterday said in a briefing to lawmakers about border security management.
At a hearing of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee, Lee said the policy is the result of international cooperation on intelligence-sharing, which has allowed the bureau to acquire the names of suspected international terrorists and bar them from entering the nation.
Lee said the National Immigration Agency established an advanced passenger information system in June last year, through which eight travelers originating from Saudi Arabia were discovered at border checks to allegedly be involved in terrorist activities.
The travelers were barred from entering Taiwan and sent back to their points of origin, Lee told lawmakers.
He did not elaborate, saying it was a matter of national security.
Despite this, the National Security Bureau said in a written report for the legislature that border security management still needs to be improved because since the beginning of the year, several foreigners have been discovered to be either hiding from justice in Taiwan or coming to the country to pursue illegal activities.
These people include a US fugitive accused of sex offenses in his home country, Dutch and Japanese visitors who illegally took photographs of military aircraft and Hong Kongers who came to Taiwan under false identities, the report said.
In that regard, the bureau has proposed that while trying to strengthen international cooperation on screening mechanisms, the authorities should reinforce exchanges of criminal data with the US government, which maintains cooperative ties with Taiwan on mutual legal assistance in judicial matters.
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