TRAVEL
Check documents: bureau
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday urged travelers to check that they have valid travel documents ready before going abroad, amid an increase in applications for passports at the airport just before departure. The ministry’s office at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport issued 196 emergency passports over the Lunar New Year holiday that ended on Monday, Bureau of Consular Affairs Deputy Director-General Roger Luo (羅添宏) said. That was far more than the 97 and 19 passports issued at the airport during the Lunar New Year holidays last year and in 2013 respectively, statistics compiled by the bureau showed. Many of the cases this year involved travelers who did not realize that their passports were set to expire within six months, which meant they could not travel abroad without having the passports renewed, Luo said.
POLITICS
Premier calls for reforms
Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) yesterday said that the nation needs to launch a series of economic, social and policy contemplation transformation projects to build “a new Taiwan.” In terms of economic transformation, the government should combine the strengths of various generations to establish a platform linking the digital and brick-and-mortar worlds, Mao said when delivering a policy report to the Legislative Yuan. The government should also ease regulatory restrictions to forge an environment favorable to innovation and entrepreneurship, with the goal of helping young people find their way to the future and creating opportunities for businesses, he said. On social transformation, the premier said the government would try to narrow the nation’s widening wealth gap by pushing tax reform that requires home sellers to pay a capital gains tax based on the actual amount they earn from selling their property rather than on the property value assessed by the government.
ENTERTAINMENT
Sky lantern festival begins
The annual sky lantern festival in New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) began after a 2.4m lantern featuring traditional goat patterns and cartoon sheep was released into the sky on Sunday, part of a time-honored tradition to welcome in the Lunar New Year. The lantern took flight with 60 smaller lanterns, upon which people’s wishes for the Year of the Goat were written. In the first part of several events, 480 1.2m sky lanterns were set to be launched in eight waves later in the day. Hu Min-shu (胡民樹), a sky lantern artisan who spent two days creating the main display, encouraged people to visit Jing Tong Elementary School to see the lanterns. He also encouraged visitors to observe an even bigger sky lantern on Friday, the beginning of a three-day holiday, at Pingsi Junior High School, where a 3.65m hot air balloon-shaped lantern is to be launched.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
SEF urges trade-in-goods pact
Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Lin Join-sane (林中森) yesterday said that signing a cross-strait trade-in-goods agreement is worthwhile. Lin said that the ratio of customs tariffs saved by Taiwanese products in China would be as much as 10-1. He made the remarks during a Lunar New Year gathering of Taiwanese businesspeople operating in China. He said he and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits’ (ARATS) Chairman Chen Deming (陳德銘) have worked out six issues for communication, including the trade-in-goods pact and a dispute-solving agreement, as well as the setting up of representative offices on each side of the Strait.
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