■ Taxes
Offices to open today
Tax offices will be open today from 8am to 5:30pm to receive tax filings as 38 percent of the nation's 5 million single and joint taxpayers had not filed their tax reports as of Friday. Tomorrow will be the last day people can file their taxes and the tax offices will be open until 7pm while the 24-hour online tax-filing system will be open until midnight.
■ SARS
PFP gives thermometers
The PFP will begin today giving free thermometers to heads of neighborhoods and low-income families in Taipei county and city to help control the spread of SARS. PFP Legislator Kao Ming-chien (高明見) said yesterday that 10,000 thermometers will be distributed in the Taipei area. He expressed the hope that all citizens will support the campaign launched recently by the government to help control the disease by taking their own temperatures every day. He also hoped that the heads of neighborhoods will help senior citizens and disabled persons take their temperatures.
■ Tourism
Ban on Singapore lifted
The government yesterday resumed issuing visas to Singaporeans after the World Health Organization (WHO) removed the city-state from the list of SARS-affected countries. "We have instructed our representative office in Singapore to resume visa services," the foreign ministry said in a statement. According to the WHO, a SARS-affected country must have been without a new SARS infection for 20 days before it can be removed from the list of SARS-affected countries.
■ WHO
Protest organized in US
A group of Taiwanese-Americans staged a sit-in demonstration on Friday in front of the Chinese Consulate General in Los Angeles to protest against China's obstruction of Taiwan's bid to join the World Health Assembly as an observer. Led by leaders of the Taiwanese Association in Southern California and the US Formosan Foundation, the demonstrators shouted slogans and waved placards protesting China's opposition to Taiwan's admission to the World Health Organization before the 24-hour sit-in began at noon. Organizers said some 1,000 Taiwanese-Americans from Los Angeles and three neighboring counties will converge on the Chinese Consulate General this morning for another round of demonstrations.
■ Smoking
Kaohsiung shows off bikes
The Kaohsiung City Government marked the "World No Tobacco Day" with a team bicycle show in the courtyard of the government's offices yesterday. The city government invited the public to be creative and use their imagination with their bicycle teams while trying to raise public awareness of the no-smoking campaign. National Kaohsiung Hospitality University students had the most eye-catching bicycle team with students dressed as chefs and waiters and waitresses. They wore ribbons emblazoned with the words "choose smoke-free restaurants while eating." Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) noted that the smoking population in Kaohsiung is around 300,000. He said that SARS has killed more than 80 in Taiwan, and the public fear of respiratory disease is high. In fact, the number of deaths from smoking in Taiwan is more than 17,000 a year, he pointed out.
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 half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS