Following the US’ lead, Australia has requested that Taiwan allow its citizens in Japan to enter the country as part of its plan to evacuate Australians from the disaster-struck country.
Taiwan has agreed to the request, presented yesterday, out of humanitarian concern, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman James Chang (章計平) said.
The Australia Commerce and Industry Office in Taiwan was unable to be reached for comment on details of the plan, such as the arrival time and the number of Australian citizens to be evacuated from Japan to Taipei.
Photo: Yao Kai-shiu, Taipei Times
Meanwhile, a second charter flight arranged by the US government with about 300 Americans on board was scheduled to arrive in Taipei at 00:45am today.
Early yesterday morning, 97 Americans arrived in Taipei, mainly families and dependents of US government employees and some US civilians.
All members of the group were tested for radiation following their arrival, but none were found to have abnormal levels of radioactivity, sources said.
Dozens of American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) employees were at the airport to help evacuees get through immigration and customs before helping them check in to hotels.
AIT spokeswoman Sheila Paskman said in a telephone interview that most of the evacuated Americans might stay in Taiwan for one or two days until they arrange flights back to the US.
There were about 190,000 Americans in Japan before the disaster struck on March 11, Paskman said.
The US Department of State on Thursday authorized the voluntary departure of family members and dependents of US personnel in Tokyo, Yokohama and Nagoya, providing charter flights to either Taipei or Seoul.
Paskman said it was not clear at the moment how many Americans would be brought to Taipei as it is arranging the charter flights day-by-day, depending on the number of people who wish to leave Japan.
The AIT suspended routine visa services for Taiwanese applicants yesterday so its visa officers could assist their compatriots at the -airport, but it is continuing the service for applicants who qualify as emergency cases.
“It remains unknown when the visa service can be resumed. It all depends on how many flights are coming to Taiwan,” Paskman said, adding that the AIT might decide a date over the weekend.
Yesterday morning, Paskman showed up at the front gate of the AIT complex, apologizing to people who were not aware of the suspension in advance.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) told lawmakers at the legislative that he had asked MOFA to help the AIT handle the entry of the Americans so that some of the AIT’s staff members could resume visa services for Taiwanese nationals.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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