Taipei Times
Date: Jan 18, 2020
By: Reuters, SHANGHAI

A second person has died from pneumonia in the central Chinese city of Wuhan following an outbreak

believed to be caused by a new coronavirus strain, local health authorities said.

The 69-year-old man surnamed Xiong (熊) had been hospitalized with multiple conditions, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said in a statement on its Web site late on Thursday.

He died on Wednesday.

Xiong exhibited abnormal renal function, severe impairment in multiple organs, inflammation of the heart muscle and other pressing conditions when he was admitted.

It was not clear from the commission’s statement whether these were pre-existing issues or consequences of the viral pneumonia.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 16 January, 2020
By: Leslie Liao

1. Why the DPP needs to listen more

2. How the KMT can renew itself and find new leaders

3. A “smart” next move for China

4. Taiwanese people realllly love to vote. We’ll explain why. 

5. The legislature has younger and more female voices. We crunched the numbers!

6. People shouldn’t make fried chicken promises they can’t keep.

7. Foreign observers were moved to tears by vote-counting process.

[SOURCE]

The upstart TPP secured five legislative seats, a major win for a party formed only five months ago by a mayor with presidential ambitions.

The Diplomat
Date: January 16, 2020
By: Nick Aspinwall   

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen notched a landslide victory over challenger Han Kuo-yu in the country’s elections on Saturday. But she wasn’t the night’s only big winner.

The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), created last August by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je, gained five legislative seats after winning almost 1.6 million votes (11.2 percent) in Taiwan’s party list contest.

Months after Ko opted not to run for president after long hinting at an independent bid, his party is now Taiwan’s third largest, eclipsing the youth-oriented New Power Party (NPP) and other better-established parties like James Soong’s People’s First Party (PFP).

Ko has cast his TPP as an alternative to Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Han’s Kuomintang (KMT), along with smaller Pan-Green (DPP-affiliated) and Pan-Blue (KMT-affiliated) parties. To drive the idea home, the party’s color is a pale hue somewhere between turquoise and aqua – officially, it’s “blue-green.” (Ko had toyed with naming his party the “White Force,” which, in Chinese, sounds similar to the NPP and does not carry troubling connotations.)

What the party stands for, however, is only beginning to take shape.    [FULL  STORY]

Netizens use slogans such as 'Mainland Taiwan,' 'Taiwanese Beijing' after Tsai's bold BBC interview

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/01/16
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — After an interview with the BBC aired on Tuesday (Jan. 14) in which the newly re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took a more defiant stance against Beijing, Western netizens had a field day conjuring up new slogans guaranteed to hurt the feelings of communist Chinese.

In the BBC interview, Tsai proclaimed that Taiwan is already an independent country and that China needs to face this "reality." She also said that the communist country should give Taiwan "more respect" and that an invasion by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) would be "very costly."

When asked about the possibility of declaring Taiwan's independence, Tsai said, "We don't have a need to declare ourselves an independent state because we are an independent country already." She pointed out that the country is called the Republic of China, Taiwan and has its own government, military, and elections.

In terms of the risk of war with China, Tsai said military preparedness is important but that international support for their cause is even more important. When asked if Taiwan could stand up to an outright attack by China, Tsai said that the country has strengthened its capabilities and that "Invading Taiwan is something that is going to be very costly for China."    [FULL  STORY]

Focu Taiwan
Date: 01/16/2020
By: Chen Wei-ting and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, Jan. 16 (CNA) Taiwan's Centers for Disease Control on Thursday upgraded its travel alert for Wuhan, citing the possibility of limited human-to-human transmission of a new type of coronavirus in the eastern China city.

So far, China has confirmed 41 cases of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), reporting one death and six patients in critical condition.

The virus has also been reported this week in two other countries — Thailand, where the patient was a tourist from Wuhan, and in Japan, where one case was confirmed Thursday.

The outbreak in China is associated with animals sold at the Huanan Seafood City market in Wuhan.
[FULL  STORY]

KMT REPORT: The party blamed ‘Internet armies,’ the party’s choice of legislator-at-large nominees and its inability to win over young people for it results the elections

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 16, 2020
By: Shih Hsiao-kuang  /  Staff reporter

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday offered his resignation to

the KMT Central Standing Committee, while the party listed in a report seven major reasons for its defeat in Saturday’s elections.

After Wu’s resignation, the committee appointed KMT Legislator William Tseng (曾銘宗) as acting secretary-general to oversee the party’s operations.

In the report, the KMT said the major factors in its defeat were that the “sense of the nation’s impending doom” (亡國感) was greater than “hatred toward the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP]”; the KMT could not control the discussion on cross-strait relations and respond to changes; “Internet armies” swayed public opinion, challenging candidates’ images and making it difficult for them to win over independent voters; the victory in Kaohsiung’s mayoral election could not be replicated and a mistake was made regarding the choice of campaign strategy; internal conflicts within the party, lack of unity and campaigning that could have been improved; the party’s list of legislator-at-large nominees did not meet public expectations; and the party was unable to win the favor of young people, who are highly engaged in politics.

The report said that because Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the party’s presidential candidate, announced his candidacy less than six months after becoming mayor, his trustworthiness was questioned.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 15 January, 2020
By: Leslie Liao

With the Lunar New Year Holiday around the corner, the military is taking extra steps to ensure Taiwan’s safety during the long weekend. Response time for F-16s is set at six minutes, and the air force is making sure there isn’t any slack.

When the alarm starts ringing, the timer begins. Pilots rush out of the guardroom, equipment in hand, and make a beeline for their fighter jets. These F-16s only have six minutes to get off the ground and intercept any threat that might be coming Taiwan’s way.

Luckily, no one is attacking this time. This is just a defense drill to make sure military capabilities don’t slack over the Lunar New Year.

Last March, a People’s Liberation Army fighter traversed the Taiwan Strait’s median line. Yen Xiang-sheng was the pilot on duty who intercepted the jet. He says he’s intercepted his share of PLA aircraft — from bombers to fighters.    [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2020/01/15
By: Rick Charette

Are you spending Lunar New Year in Taipei? Immerse yourself with local traditions by visiting the New Year markets and indulging in holiday sweets.As with Christmas, the Lunar New Year holidays are essentially a time of thankfulness — of festive family reunions and get-togethers with one’s dearest relatives and friends. And as with the Christmas season run-up to the big day, the period leading up to the first day of the Lunar New Year brims with warm, gleeful feelings and excited anticipation.

A cherished cultural centerpiece of these lead-in weeks is the joy of heading to busy and colorful New Year markets to stock up on nianhuo (年貨), literally “New Year goods,” meaning all the goodies, decorations, and other traditional items that fill homes with auspicious symbolism. There’s an impressive amount of stocking up to do, for during the long holidays there is near constant feasting and entertaining. Most food and snack items are bought beforehand, because most retail operators shut down operations, at least for the first few days of the holiday.

Every year in anticipation of the Lunar New Year, crowds flow into New Year markets in Taipei to shop and prepare for the holiday.

A Historical Aside: One theory on the determined holiday partying — throughout much of Chinese history, over 90 percent of the population have been farm folk, tedious work filling almost all days, the monotony interrupted only by a few annual festival breaks. People made the most of these, letting loose with abundance in all sensory stimulations, filling the celebrations with food, noise, and color. In the home, abundance in this is itself auspicious, inviting good fortune to flow in freely all through the year to come.    [FULL  STORY]

Suspect was listed as fugitive five years ago

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/01/15
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A Taiwanese man accused of having killed his Chinese wife in Thailand had been wanted for fraud on the island, reports said Wednesday (Jan. 15).

Lu, 38, reportedly killed his wife and put her body in a suitcase which he dropped into the sea, the Liberty Times reported. On Jan. 10, the suitcase was found on a beach in Bang Phra, a resort in Chonburi Province, southeast of Bangkok.

Last Sunday, police arrested Lu at a rented apartment and found evidence he had bought “duct tape, cords and large plastic bags from a hardware store” in the area, according to the Bangkok Post.

The couple reportedly arrived in Thailand last August, with the wife, Liew (劉) , 33, giving birth to a baby later in the year. The fatal argument reportedly involved whether or not the child should have Taiwanese citizenship, the Liberty Times reported.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 01/15/2020
By: Yeh Su-ping, Wen Kuei-hsiang, Wang Yang-yu and Joseph Yeh

Taipei, Jan. 15 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Wednesday attempted to reassure the public that the Anti-infiltration Act will not affect nationals who conduct legal exchanges with Chinese counterparts, after officially promulgating the act into law earlier in the day.

In an address to the country made from the Presidential Office, Tsai said the act prohibits only a handful of actions; including making political donations; engaging in electioneering; sabotaging legal assembly; lobbying and interfering with elections; carried out under the instruction of China, commissioned or funded by China.

The act will not affect normal cross-strait exchanges, she stressed.

Amid concerns regarding the new law, the president said she has asked the Executive Yuan to make timely clarifications and explain the act to avoid causing unnecessary social panic.
[FULL  STORY]