POLITICS
Taipei mayor to visit US
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) plans to visit New York, Boston and Philadelphia on an official 11-day trip to the US, which starts on Wednesday. The visit would focus on municipal exchanges, a source in the Taipei City Government said. Chiang is to stay in New York for three days, during which he plans to visit Times Square to learn about pedestrian-friendly policies and Citi Field baseball stadium to gather information that could help improve Taipei Dome operations. He is to travel to Boston on Sunday, and meet local city officials at the Massachusetts State House on Monday during the day and deliver a speech titled “Global Taipei: Bridging Tradition and Innovation” at the John F. Kennedy Jr Forum at Harvard University in the evening. Chiang is to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the following day, before taking a train to Philadelphia for additional municipal-related activities. He is scheduled to fly back to Taiwan on Saturday next week.
SOCIETY
Crane falls in Kaohsiung
One Vietnamese worker was killed and one Taiwanese worker was badly injured at a construction site in Kaohsiung’s Fongshan District (鳳山) yesterday morning after a tower crane collapsed, the city’s fire bureau said. First responders found the Vietnamese man’s body under the collapsed crane, with no vital signs, and an unconscious Taiwanese man with multiple bone fractures, the bureau said, adding that it received a report about the incident at about 9:40am. The Taiwanese man, who was the operator of the tower crane, was injured after it fell to the ground and has been hospitalized, Kaohsiung City Labor Affairs Bureau chief secretary Pi Chung-mou (皮忠謀) said. All work at the construction site has been ordered to stop for an investigation into the deadly incident, Pi said. The Labor Affairs Bureau would work with Vietnam’s representative office in Taiwan and help the family of the Vietnamese man make necessary arrangements, including claiming compensation for the work-related death, Pi added.
SPORTS
RCBIC to begin next week
The Kaohsiung Respect Culture Breaking International Championships (RCBIC) are to take place at the Kaohsiung Music Center on Saturday and Sunday next week, featuring Canadian breakdancer B-Boy Phil Wizard, who won the gold medal for men’s breaking in the Paris Olympics last month, the event organizer said. The competition has a total prize of NT$1.5 million (US$46,963) and would have team battles, individual men’s and women’s categories, a category for individuals younger than 15 years old and a new all-style individual category for the first time, the Kaohsiung Sports Development Bureau said. The event would also feature judges and top breakers from the Paris Games, the bureau added. Renowned South Korean breakdancer B-Boy Hong 10 and Menno from the Netherlands, who are three-time Red Bull BC One world champions, are also to participate in the event. Japanese breakdancer B-Girl Ayumi, a competitor in the women’s breaking competition at the Paris Olympics, would serve as a judge. Known for her smooth moves and impressive musicality, Ayumi remains a top-ranked breaker at the age of 40. Another judge is South Korean breakdancer Virus, who is known for integrating crutches into his breaking, the bureau said in the statement.
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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