The Department of Health is planning to visit Canada at the end of the month to evaluate the possibility of lifting the ban on Canadian beef, President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen, who hosted a delegation of Canadian parliamentarians and their families at the Presidential Office yesterday, told his guests that Department of Health Minister Hou Sheng-mao (侯勝茂) was scheduled to lead a delegation of experts to inspect Canadian beef quarantine and sanitary procedures at the end of the month.
The information obtained would serve as a reference to the department's evaluation of whether to reopen the local market to Canadian beef. Several Asian markets, including China, Japan and Taiwan, banned Canadian beef following a case of mad cow disease in Canada in May 2003.
Taiwan was the fifth-largest market for Canadian beef and the exports were worth C$20 million (NT$580 million) each year.
As Taiwan is Canada's seventh-largest source of tourists, Chen yesterday called on the Canadian government to offer visa-free travel to Taiwanese visitors.
Statistics show that an average of 100,000 Taiwanese tourists visit Canada each year. In addition, there are 15,000 Taiwanese students studying in Canada, a number that is growing by about 2,500 students per year.
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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