■ CRIME
Banned pesticides found
Authorities have uncovered a total of 80 tonnes of banned or substandard pesticides smuggled from China on sale around Taiwan, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday. The pesticides, which were being sold at 20 pesticide shops nationwide, include long-banned fentin acetate, a lethal weapon against crop-depleting apple snails, as well as 10 other categories of counterfeit pesticides such as cyromazine, acetamiprid and bismerthiazol, officials from the council’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said.
■ DIPLOMACY
New envoys appointed
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday announced the appointment of several new ambassadors to the nation’s diplomatic allies in the South Pacific, as well as representatives to two European countries. Benjamin Ho (何登煌), now deputy head of Taiwan’s representative office in Singapore, will become an ambassador to Kiribati, while Jason Wan (萬家興), currently serving in Canada, will be reassigned to lead the embassy in the Pacific island nation of Nauru. T.S. Cheng (鄭天授) and Abraham Chu (朱文祥) will head the nation’s representative offices in Finland and Sweden, the ministry said. Foreign Minister Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) expressed hope that, following President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) call to prioritize economic issues in diplomacy, the two new delegates to the Scandinavian countries could help Taiwanese companies seek business opportunities there.
■ IMMIGRATION
Airport system crashes again
The immigration computer system at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport experienced another breakdown yesterday morning, lasting 20 minutes. Added to the two more serious breakdowns suffered last month, yesterday’s incident marked the third system breakdown this year. National Immigration Agency Deputy Director-General Huang Pi-hsia (黃碧霞) said that yesterday’s incident happened because of a system database capacity shortage when the agency was converting files in the database. No flight delays were caused as a result of the incident and no one banned from leaving or entering the country passed immigration during the 20-minute stoppage.
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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