ARTS
Duck to return to Kaohsiung
Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s famous yellow rubber duck is set to return to Kaohsiung late this month for its first appearance in the southern port city since it floated around Glory Pier (光榮碼頭) 10 years ago, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said yesterday. The giant yellow rubber duck is to bob around Love River Bay from Jan. 27 to Feb. 25, Chen said at a press event. He said the city government had applied in September for the duck to return for this year’s Kaohsiung Lantern Festival, which began earlier last month and is to run until Feb. 28. Hofman approved the request after visiting and inspecting the bay, during which time he expressed surprise at how the city had progressed over the last decade, Chen said.
Photo: Taipei Times file
SEISMICITY
Earthquake hits Yilan
A magnitude 4.5 earthquake struck Yilan County in northeastern Taiwan at 5:57am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration said. The epicenter of the temblor was in Yilan’s Suao Township (蘇澳), 14.2km south-southeast of Yilan County Hall, at a depth of 47.4km, the agency’s Seismology Center said. The earthquake’s intensity was highest in Yilan, where it measured a three on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of two in Hualien County and New Taipei City. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. In other news, the Central Weather Administration yesterday said that today the weather would remain cool in northern and northeastern Taiwan, with highs of 17°C to 19°C predicted. It is expected to be as high as 22°C to 24°C in central and southern Taiwan. Occasional showers were forecast for Taipei and New Taipei City, the northern coast in Keelung, and eastern Taiwan, while the other areas could see cloudy or sunny skies, it said. People living south of Hsinchu and the outlying islands of Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu have a higher chance of seeing the sunrise, while areas north of Taoyuan and the eastern half of Taiwan are expected to have a cloudy sky during the sunrise, it added.
SOCIETY
Man and son drown
A father and son drowned early on Saturday in a campground in Miaoli County’s Jhoulan Township (卓蘭), the county’s fire bureau said. The bureau said it received a report at 12:45pm from a campground owner that their surveillance camera record showed that a father in his 30s and his two-year-old son had fallen into the pond inside the campground at about 8am. A search and rescue operation later found the father and son in the water without vital signs and they were pronounced dead after being admitted to the hospital. The size of the pond was about 400m2 and three-meters deep. The campground owner said the father and son went to the area with other family members on Friday night, but right before they were about to have lunch at about noon on Saturday, they found the father and son had disappeared and asked the campground owner to check their whereabouts using the surveillance cameras. The police said that based on their initial investigation, the father, surnamed Hsieh (謝), took his son to the pond on Saturday morning and found that his son had fallen into the water when he was preparing fishing gear and jumped into the pond to rescue the child.
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