CULTURE
Dance carnival in Taichung
The 2019 International Dance Carnival is to be held in three Taichung parks on two consecutive weekends, Oct. 25 to 27 and Nov. 1 to 3. Nearly 50 dance troupes from Taiwan, Spain, Belgium, Japan and South Korea have been invited to perform, Taichung Tourism and Travel Bureau Director Lin Hsiao-chi (林筱淇) said on Sunday. The performances will be held at the Fulfillment Amphitheater in Wen-Hsin Forest Park (文心森林公園), the Art Museum Parkway (美術園) and Charlotte Park (夏綠地公園). The bureau sponsored a “1,000-person dance” in the lobby of Taipei Railway Station on Sunday to promote the carnival.
HEALTH
Dengue case in Taichung
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Sunday confirmed the first case of dengue fever in Taichung this year, warning of an outbreak in the city if mosquito breeding grounds are not quickly eliminated. A man in his 60s on Tuesday last week went to a hospital complaining of a high fever and severe pains, and on Sunday his blood tests came back positive for the dengue, CDC Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said. Six containers of water near the man’s home were most likely the breeding grounds of the Aedes mosquito that transmits the disease, Lo said, adding there was a “medium” risk of the disease spreading in the area. However, authorities are also investigating whether the source might have been a confirmed dengue patient, who had visited the area recently after returning from a trip to India, he added. A New Taipei City resident has also been confirmed to have dengue and the man has been quarantined in a local hospital, the agency said. Local authorities are fumigating and cleaning the areas where the two new cases were confirmed, it said.
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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