Close to 20 single female politicians from both the blue and green camps have created a "singles club," the Chinese-language media reported yesterday.
The report said around a dozen legislators and Cabinet officials set up the Orchid Society (
Founding members include PFP Legislator Shen Chih-hui (
Members from the executive branch include Council for Hakka Affairs Chairwoman Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭), Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Council of Labor Affairs Chairwoman Chen Chu (陳菊) and Council of Cultural Affairs Chairwoman Tchen Yu-chiou (陳郁秀), the report said.
Wang was "expelled" from the club after she got married in May, the report said.
The club does not make the identities of its members public, the report said, and the membership has expanded to almost 20, with DPP Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) as a new member.
The report did not say where and how the members meet or what the club activities are.
Last month, female lawmakers lined up to blast the Ministry of the Interior for considering a tax on unmarried citizens aged 40 and older as part of an attempt to turn around the declining birthrate.
The outcry prompted Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (
KMT Legislator Yang panned the "single's tax" as the most grotesque initiative she had ever heard of.
"The disputed tax was purely a scholarly opinion," Yu told the legislature last month. "It has been rejected by the ministry."
The task force also scrapped an earlier plan to award couples NT$30,000 for every child after two on grounds the measure would strain cash-strapped state coffers.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
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