Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/06/12
By: Tseng Ying-yu and Lilian Wu

Taipei, June 12 (CNA) Taiwan will ban the selling or buying of human organs, according to

amendments to organ transplant regulations that cleared the Legislature Friday.

No money should be involved in providing or receiving organs, and those who sell or buy them will face a jail term of between one and five years and/or fines of between NT$300,000 (US$9,697) and NT$1.5 million.

Doctors found to have violated the regulations will be fined between NT$120,000 and NT$600,000, be suspended from practicing for between one month and one year, and in the most serious cases, have their licenses revoked.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-06-12
By: CNA

The government regrets that eight South Korean workers were recently found to have been

engaged in activity other than that stated on their visas and thus were undermining public order, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said Thursday.

The ministry said it was urging foreign nationals to respect the country’s laws.

On Tuesday, eight South Korean workers from Hydis Technologies staged a protest in Taipei and were detained by police for violating the Social Order Maintenance Act. They were deported Wednesday.

Hydis is a South Korean subsidiary of Taiwan’s E Ink Holdings. Since Hydis was shut down in March, workers from the factory have traveled to Taiwan several times to protest against E Ink’s decision to close the factory.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 13, 2015

They say Taiwan’s most beautiful scenery is its people, but is that really true? A woman tour guide slammed two female Taiwanese tourists on Facebook, saying that the pair of them had

expressed their dissatisfaction with the cleaning service at an Australian hotel by making a mess of the room. Their shocking antics included stuffing underwear in the refrigerator, scattering red-stained panties around and leaving the floor covered in toilet paper.

With an air of frustration, the tour guide said, “It was a shameful sight. All I could see in it was disgruntled revenge.” Following the incident, the Australian hotel wanted them to pay A$415, or about NT$9,868, in compensation. The two Taiwanese women haggled the amount down and settled at A$200, or roughly NT$4,756. At one point they even asked if A$150 would be enough.

The tour guide said that when they were preparing to board the plane for their return flight, a tour group member saw the two girls carrying “trophies” onto the plane. “Didn’t they say they had run out of money? It’s really a disgrace,” she sighed. “Do not keep saying that Hong Kong women make trouble in Taiwan or Chinese people have no class,” she went on. “When tourists behave like this abroad, they do not just bring shame on themselves; they also give their own country a bad name.”     [FULL  STORY]

Reuters
By: Faith Hung; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman

Taiwan’s two biggest airlines are temporarily cutting their total flights to South Korea by nearly

half, the carriers said, citing falling travel demand to the nation where nine people have died from the outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

China Airlines will cut the number of flights to South Korea to 27 a week from 42 now, while EVA Airways will cut its weekly flights to seven from 20, according to statements from the companies on Wednesday. The cut will run from mid-June to end of July.

Earlier this month, about 15 percent of its reservations to the country were canceled, China Airlines added.

Taiwanese health authorities widened on Tuesday their travel alert to cover all of South Korea, from just Seoul earlier, as the MERS outbreak spread.

South Korea reported on Wednesday two more deaths and 13 new cases linked to MERS, raising the death toll to nine and bringing the total number of infections from the coronavirus to 108.

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/06/11
By: Emerson Lim and Lillian Lin

Manila, June 11 (CNA) Another Taiwanese fishing boat registered at Donggang, Pingtung County, Der Man Fu No. 3 (得滿福3號), was detained by a Philippine patrol boat at around 1 a.m. Thursday in the waters about 11.3 nautical miles north off the Babuyan Islands, Philippine officials said.

A spokesman for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in the Philippines confirmed that two Taiwanese fishermen were on board the boat which had already been towed to the northern Philippine port of Irene.

The fishermen will face an investigation in the nearby town of Aparri, since they were accused by the Philippine coastal patrol force of poaching in Philippine territorial waters, according to Philippine officials.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-06-11
By: CNA and Staff Reporter

Taiwanese presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s statement said that that she will continue to

promote cross-Taiwan Strait peace under the current Republic of China Constitution if elected does not mean she has embraced the 1992 Consensus, a US scholar said Tuesday.

“I think Tsai’s statement that she seeks to build cross-strait relations on the foundation built on the accumulated outcomes and the achievements of the last three ROC presidents over the past more than 20 years is important,” said Bonnie Glaser, an expert on China affairs and cross-strait issues at the CSIS.

“It seems to me that this includes the outcomes of the talks held in 1992. It doesn’t mean that she has embraced the 1992 Consensus, but it implies that she accepts that there was a positive outcome of those talks that, along with other developments (including the achievements of the Ma Ying-jeou administration) should be treasured and secured,” she added.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/06/11
By: Wang Shwu-fen and Maubo Chang

Kaohsiung, June 11 (CNA) A dengue fever cluster was reported in Kaohsiung Thursday after three cases of the disease at the same locality were confirmed by local health authorities.

The three cases were found at the Nanzih Veterans Home where one 84-year-old resident, and two staff members, one of whom was living in the home, the other living in Gushan District of Kaohsiung, were diagnosed with the disease. All three cases are considered indigenous, said health officials.

The three victims developed symptoms of the disease between May 27 and June 5.

Since all of them are either working or living at the veterans home, health officials conducted a hygiene check of the home June 4-6, and found nearly 100 adult mosquitoes were carriers of the dengue virus, said the Kaohsiung City Government Department of Health.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-06-11
By: CNA and Staff Reporter

Taiwan’s outlying island county of Kinmen is to hold a drill in a bid to keep the Middle East

Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) at bay amid the scare over an outbreak of the epidemic in South Korea.

Kinmen lies a short distance from the Chinese mainland, where there was been a single imported case of MERS so far. As of Wednesday noon, the virus had infected 108 and killed nine people in South Korea.

The local health bureau said the drill will be held without warning at Kinmen Hospital, which will simulate a situation in which a 25-year old local man returning from mainland China via ferry service is sent to a nearby hospital after presenting with a fever and a cough.

At the hospital, simulations presenting five different scenarios throughout the infection control process — from the patient’s admission for treatment, taking samples for analysis, informing relevant authorities and imposing isolation in a negative pressure ward — will be staged, the bureau said.     [FULL  STORY]

CHINESE WORK?Prosecutors said that Chung Hsin Electric and Machinery Manufacturing subcontracted work that saw parts for military vehicles made in China

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 12, 2015
By: Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

Public prosecutors have detained dozens of military officials and civilian defense contractors

for questioning as part of a massive operation yesterday investigating military corruption in which contractors allegedly provided cheap, inferior components from China that were used to produce CM-32 “Clouded Leopard” armored vehicles.

The operation involved raids that resulted in about 60 people being detained, along with the seizure of documents and other evidence at 37 locations across the nation, including the Ministry of National Defense’s Procurement Office, the Ordnance Readiness Development Center in Nantou County and the ministry’s Armaments Bureau 209th Arsenal, which has its facilities at the ordinance center.

Military officials and supervisors of the ministry’s procurement program allegedly colluded with unqualified contractors over a NT$7.6 billion (US$243.9 million) tender package in 2012 to provide chassis and power equipment for the CM-32 vehicles, which were developed by the ordinance center, the military’s main production and maintenance facility for tanks and armored personnel carriers.     [FULL  STORY]

Yahoo News
Date: June 9, 2015
By: AFP

Taipei (AFP) – Taiwan’s longest-serving death row prisoner, who says he confessed after being

tortured, could be given a last chance of freedom in a case that has sparked criticism from rights groups.

Lawyers for Chiou Ho-shun, 55, who has been on death row since 1989, lodged a motion for a retrial at the High Court in Taipei Tuesday after two retired police officers backed his torture claims.

The officers presented their evidence to the top government watchdog the Control Yuan in 2013 and that body recommended an “extraordinary appeal” to prosecutors.     [FULL  STORY]