WEATHER
No cold surge this year
This year will be the first in nearly two decades not to experience a cold surge, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday. A cold surge is when the temperature in greater Taipei falls to 10°C or lower, the bureau said. Cold surges usually arrive around New Year’s Day and tend to fall between Dec. 10 and Jan. 23, bureau forecaster Hsu Chung-yi (許仲毅) said. However, no cold surges were recorded last winter or this winter so far, meaning that temperatures of 10°C or lower will have been absent for a full year for the first time since 2000, Hsu said. Independent meteorologist Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said there have been plenty of cold air masses in East Asia this winter, but conditions have not been right for them to move southward, so they have instead moved eastward or westward, leaving the weather in Taiwan relatively warm.
FOOD
Illegal product guide passed
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday introduced new guidelines for shuttering businesses that sell illegal food products, effective immediately. An order for a company to temporarily close can be issued if it is found to have made at least NT$10 million (US$333,689) from selling illegal products or if products it sells are shown to be detrimental to health, agency division chief Hsiao Hui-wen (蕭惠文) said. In addition, businesses found to have made at least NT$30 million by selling such products or to be selling products that are potentially life-threatening can be immediately shut down and removed from the business registry, she said. The list of products covered by the guidelines include expired goods, products containing traces of insecticide or radiation, food containing industrial additives, and products in containers that violate safety regulations. Repeat offenders or business owners who have intentionally sold illegal food products are subject to fines of between NT$60,000 and NT$200 million and must permanently shut down their business operations, Hsiao added.
DEFENSE
Senior promotions approved
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has approved the promotion of 31 senior military personnel, the Ministry of National Defense announced yesterday. Tsai promoted eight officers to the ranks of two-star general, lieutenant general and admiral, with the other 23 elevated to the ranks of one-star general, major general and vice admiral, the ministry said in a statement. Tsai is to attend the conferral ceremony in Taipei on Thursday, while the promotions are to take effect next month, it said. The officers designated to become one-star and two-star generals came from the ministry, the Presidential Office, the National Security Council and the National Security Bureau, it added.
TOURISM
Philippine visitors skyrocket
The visa-free program for Philippine nationals doubled the number of visits by Filipinos to the nation last month, National Immigration Agency statistics show. Since the nation granted the privilege on Nov. 1, there have been 31,747 visitors from the Philippines, up 107.66 percent compared with the same period last year, during which 15,288 trips were made, the agency said. About 7,500 visitors (23.6 percent) entered Taiwan visa-free for up to 14 days, it added. The number of those traveling for tourism grew to 18,679, a year-on-year growth of about 230 percent, the agency said. The nine-month trial, part of the government’s New Southbound Policy, is to end on July 31 next year.
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