Cabinet agencies have launched a mechanism in order to more effectively limit losses resulting from introduced species, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday.
The council's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said yesterday that the nation's ecological systems have been jeopardized by 10 introduced species including the Polynesian rat (
Yeh Ying (
"So now we need to make greater efforts to stop illegal importation of foreign species and educate the nation," Yeh said.
Yeh said that the government would study a list of the world's top 100 most dangerous alien species, as chosen by the World Conservation Union, in order to prevent possible disasters resulting from biological invasions.
Officials said that deliberate introductions of foreign species would be carefully controlled in order to avoid possible ecological catastrophes. Last month, the bureau announced that at least NT$150 million (US$4.55 million) would be spent this year to protect local flora.
Agricultural officials in Changhua County said yesterday that red fire ants had spread out over an area of 498 km2, including fields, vegetable gardens and even on shade trees.
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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