A navy ship will leave today for Cebu City, Philippines, carrying relief supplies for Typhoon Haiyan survivors, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.
It will be the first time the navy has visited the Philippines since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
It will take four days for the Chung He class tank-landing ship to travel the 900 nautical miles (1,667km) from Greater Kaoshiung’s Zuoying District (左營), ministry spokesman Major General David Lo (羅紹和) said.
The government donated US$200,000 after Haiyan hit the Philippines on Nov. 8 and sent 150 tonnes of relief supplies collected by Taiwanese charities by military transport planes.
Air force C-130 planes have made 18 flights to deliver relief supplies to the Philippines, beginning on Nov. 12.
Minister Without Portfolio Lin Jung-tzer (林政則) traveled on one of the flights on Thursday last week to check on how the relief supplies are being distributed.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs statistics show that the government and Taiwanese organizations have contributed funds and supplies worth more than NT$190 million (US$6.42 million) to the Philippines as of Thursday.
The navy helped transport Vietnamese refugees in Subic Bay in 1975 after the fall of the South Vietnamese government.
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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