The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday released a video to mark the Year of the Ox ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday and highlight Taiwan-US teamwork in fighting COVID-19.
The US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan has the custom each Lunar New Year of releasing a themed video.
The two-minute video posted on Facebook yesterday showed AIT Director Brent Christensen, Deputy Director Raymond Greene, spokeswoman Amanda Mansour and other institute officials writing Chinese characters.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
To underscore the institute’s slogan “Real Friends, Real Progress,” the video showed images of Christensen meeting with Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) during the fight against COVID-19.
The video had Hong Kong-born Taiwanese singer Wakin Chau (周華健) singing his song Friends in the background.
The video also showed images of Christensen and Chen meeting with former US secretary of health and human services Alex Azar during his visit to Taiwan in August last year.
An “Easter egg” at the end of the video is when the “I” in “AIT” turns into a symbol of love, a pun on the pronunciation of “love” (ai, 愛) in Chinese.
“We will remember 2020 not only for the challenges and heartbreak brought by the pandemic, but for the profound friendship Taiwan showed the United States during our time of need,” the AIT wrote on Facebook. “We hope the Year of the Ox brings us all health and happiness, prosperity and peace.”
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
RSS