IMMIGRATION
Adverts prompt warning
Individuals or companies found offering paid immigration services without authorization would be subject to fines of up to NT$1 million (US$32,686), the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said in a news release yesterday. Adverts in a Facebook group have been found offering Vietnamese nationals in Taiwan “low-cost” services to guide them through the process of renouncing their citizenship and applying for citizenship in Taiwan, the NIA said. However, offering paid immigration services without a license and official registration contravenes statutes of the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法) that is punishable by fines of NT$200,000 to NT$1 million, it said. Foreign nationals who have questions about applying for residence or citizenship can call or visit their local NIA service station or call the NIA’s 1990 consultation hotline, it added.
SOCIETY
Turkey donation drive ends
People in Taiwan had made more than 205,000 cash donations totaling NT$1.17 billion to a relief fund for Turkey as of 5pm on Monday, when the government-run fund stopped accepting donations, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said yesterday. Donations received from 5:01pm to 11:59pm were to be calculated and announced later, it said. Turkey was struck by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on Feb. 6 and several powerful aftershocks in the following days. The death toll in Turkey was nearing 46,000 as of Sunday. The day after the initial massive earthquake, the ministry set up dedicated bank accounts to which people could make cash donations through kiosks at convenience stores, ATMs, or in person at banks or post offices.
SOCIETY
Make-up day rules proposed
The Directorate-General of Personnel Administration on Monday proposed four ways that Saturday “make-up” days could be set around public holidays. Agency Minister Su Chun-jung (蘇俊榮) added that it was equally open to maintaining the system as it is. The possible changes include scheduling make-up days for Lunar New Year’s Eve only, or for Lunar New Year’s Eve and Tomb Sweeping Day, Su said. The other options would be using make-up days for the so-called “three festivals” — Lunar New Year, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival — or for the three festivals plus Tomb Sweeping Day and Children’s Day, he said.
ART
‘Hazy Humid Day’ to return
Hazy Humid Day, a Taiwan-inspired work by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, is to return to Taiwan for a 10-year traveling exhibition that starts at Kaohsiung’s Neiwei Arts Center on April 1, organizers said. Nara, who is known for his distinctive and unsettling portraits of children, held a series of solo exhibitions in Taipei, Kaohsiung and Tainan in 2021 and last year, for which he specifically created the painting Hazy Humid Day. Since then, the Taipei-based General Association of Chinese Culture has kept in close contact with Nara and the two sides recently agreed to exhibit Hazy Humid Day at locations across Taiwan over a 10-year period, association secretary-general Lee Hou-ching (李厚慶) told reporters yesterday. The first leg of the exhibition would be in Kaohsiung, where the painting will be displayed from April 1 to Aug. 31, Lee said. It would then be sent back to Japan for three to four months for a special exhibition of Nara’s work before returning to its second destination in Taiwan, which has yet to be decided, he said.
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