■ Society
A-mei in hot water
Some people might think that seeing Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹) in concert is something to die for, but the Taipei health department was not amused when it found that the pop singer and her band were being rushed in a privately booked ambulance from venue to venue on New Year's Eve. The Taipei City Department of Health said yesterday that although the I Hsin Ambulance Co is a private company, this does not absolve it from its duty to transport the injured and sick, and it will be fined NT$200,000 (US$6,154) for transporting the pop singer, aka A-mei (阿妹), and her band from Taoyuan City to Taipei City, said Kao Wei-chun (高偉君), a department official in charge of medical management. Kao made the remarks after Democratic Progressive Party City Councilor Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) accused television station CTV at a news conference of leasing an ambulance for the singer to facilitate her whirlwind performance tour on New Year's Eve.
■ Society
Student `buys' friendship
A high school student has given away NT$10,000 (US$300) in cash and gifts to his classmates to buy their friendship, a newspaper said yesterday. Huang, a student at the Wenshan High School in Kaohsiung County, had no friends at school so he decided to buy their friendship by giving birthday gifts to his classmates, the United Daily News reported. Huang gave presents or cash to 10 classmates so that they could buy their own birthday presents, the paper said. The loner's father found out that his son was stealing money from home to buy the gifts for his classmates and reported to the school. The school has reprimanded the students for accepting birthday gifts from Huang and asked them to return the presents or cash to Huang, the report said.
■ Lunar New Year
Government offers gifts
In view of the coming Lunar New Year which falls on Jan. 29 this year, free Spring Festival posters with placards featuring poetry will be available upon request for all visitors to the Presidential Office between Jan. 9 and Jan 27. According to Chen Wen-tsung (陳文宗), director-general of the Presidential Office's Department of Public Affairs, two kinds of Spring Festival couplets are available this year. The Presidential Office is open from 9am to 12am, Monday to Friday, for visitors to tour the building. English-speaking tour guides are available.
■ Lunar New Year
Taipei announces theme
The Taipei City Government invited the public to participate in the 2006 Taipei Lantern Festival at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall from Feb. 10 to Feb. 19. This year's festival, with the theme of "A Prosperous and Fortunate Taipei," will feature a dog mascot -- named "Wang Wang" (旺旺) (in Chinese 旺 carries the meaning of prosperity) -- as well as Wang Wang's journey with a little boy to find his sister Fu Fu (福福). The Taipei City Government invited residents to attend the festival to join the journey of the mascot, and to discover how the story ends on Feb. 11, during lantern-lighting night. At a press conference yesterday the city government also released the design of a handheld lantern for the festival, which is based on the mascot. A total of 100,000 lanterns will be given out free to participants during the festival.
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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