TRAVEL
New Macau customs rules
From yesterday, visitors entering Macau with 120,000 Macau patacas (US$14,933) or more in cash or “bearer-negotiable instruments” must be declared or risk a fine, the Mainland Affairs Council said. The statement was based on Macau’s Control of Cross-Boundary Transport of Currency and Bearer Negotiable Instruments law, passed by the territory’s Legislative Council in June to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Visitors carrying cash exceeding the amount must fill out a declaration form to show customs officers. Travelers who fail to do so, both upon arrival and at departure, can be fined from 1,000 to 500,000 patacas. Bearer-negotiable instruments include traveler’s checks, checks, bank drafts, payment orders and promissory notes, the council said. Gold, other precious metals and gems are excluded from the regulation, as are transiting travelers. Passengers should contact Macau’s customs services for more information, the council said.
TOURISM
Hopes high for Philippines
The Tourism Bureau this week expressed optimism about Philippine tourism, thanks to a trial program starting next month that is to offer Philippine nationals visa-free entry to Taiwan for up to 14 days. About 180,000 Philippine nationals visited Taiwan between January and August, an increase of more than 70 percent compared with the same period last year, bureau official Tsao Yi-shu (曹逸書) said. The trial program will hopefully bring even more tourists from the Philippines by the end of the year, Tsao said. The majority of Philippine travelers to Taiwan are young people, Tsao said, adding that their activities mostly involve shopping in major cities in northern Taiwan.
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