The National Health Insurance Administration yesterday announced that people can apply for new National Health Insurance (NHI) program cards at household registration offices in 19 cities and counties.
“Statistics show that approximately 440,000 identification cards and 660,000 NHI cards are lost each year, with about 300,000 people losing both yearly,” Underwriting Division official Wu Hsin (吳昕) said.
Wu said that in the past, people who lost both credentials had to go to a household registration office to get a replacement identification card and an agency office to get a new NHI card, which was a waste of time and money.
To address the problem, the agency and the Ministry of the Interior’s Department of Household Registration launched a cross-agency information platform, through which a household registration office can forward NHI card information to the administration.
“The new policy is expected to save an applicant 30 minutes and NT$50 in transportation expenses,” Wu said.
Meanwhile, a number of new policies drawn up by the Food and Drug Administration are to take effect today.
One of them targets genetically modified (GM) foods, requiring producers of food products with more than 3 percent GM ingredients to label the items either as “genetically modified” or “containing genetically modified content.”
Previously, the limit was 5 percent.
Sugar content notifications are to become mandatory from today. Food manufacturers have to display the total amount of sugar on labels of packaged food items.
They are also required to list each nutrient in the product and its percentage of the recommended daily intake.
Labels must also notify consumers of the possible presence of the six most serious types of food allergens.
The FDA also recommends that food producers notify consumers in the nutrition table if a product might contain goat milk, fish, shellfish, cephalopods, nuts, gluten-containing grains, soybean and kiwifruit.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
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