Asked whether restrictions imposed by Russia on “unfriendly nations” would affect Taiwan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) yesterday said that the government would monitor the situation closely as Russia is still drafting the details.
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov on Monday said that Moscow is drafting regulations to ban the entry of people from countries on its “unfriendly” list.
The Russian government released a list of 48 countries and territories that have taken “unfriendly actions against Russia and its companies and citizens” on March 9.
The list includes Taiwan and other Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore, as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UK, the US and EU countries, among others.
“The government is drafting an executive order to use visa policies as a vengeance on several foreign governments for their unfriendly actions. The order will put restrictions on their entries to Russia,” Lavrov said on TV.
The order might affect Taiwanese visiting Russia for business or study, Ou said.
There are about 180 Taiwanese in Russia, all of whom are keeping in touch with the representative office in Moscow, she said, adding that they have so far not reported any issues concerning their personal safety.
In August last year, Russia suspended visa applications from Taiwan and other countries to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, Ou said.
No visa denial cases had been reported to the ministry, she added.
Any impact on Taiwan should be limited, as Russia is not a major supplier of industrial materials to the nation, and Taiwan has diverse sources of petroleum and natural gas, Ou said.
Taiwanese can still leave Russia if they want to, as several international airlines continue to operate in Russia, she added.
The ministry said that people planning to travel to Russia should prepare sufficient rubles and US dollars before their trip to avoid being affected by Russia’s trade policies.
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