Ministry of National Defense monitored Thursday morning flight from north to south

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/08/29
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

A group of MC-130J tankers flying over New Mexico (USAF photo by Matthew Plew) (By Wikimedia Commons)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A United States Air Force Special Operations Command MC-130J Commando II tanker flew over the Taiwan Strait from north to south Thursday (August 29), according to the Ministry of National Defense.

The flight occurred around 11 a.m., with the ministry saying it monitored the event from start to finish, with nothing out of the ordinary happening, the Central News Agency reported.

The flight happened shortly after the U.S. approved the sale of 66 F-16V fighter jets to Taiwan, while an amphibious San Antonio-class vessel sailed through the Taiwan Strait from south to north on August 23, CNA noted.

In a news release Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense said it was able to monitor all air and sea traffic in the areas surrounding Taiwan and to respond in an appropriate manner.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/08/29
By: Matt Yu and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, Aug. 29 (CNA) Taiwan is not for sale and cannot be bought by any country, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesperson Joanne Ou (歐江安) said Thursday, in response to a petition posted on a United States government website under the heading "Purchase Taiwan."

The petition on the We the People website, created on Aug. 27 by "C.C.," calls on the U.S. to purchase Taiwan instead of Greenland and thus create a win-win situation.

"Purchasing Taiwan will bolster U.S. security and interest in the Asia-Pacific region and protect Taiwanese people from Communism," the petition states.

Commenting on the matter, Ou said the petition is still in its early stages and has not yet reached the threshold to obtain a response from the U.S. White House.    [FULL  STORY8]

Taipei Times
Date:  Aug 30, 2019
By: Bloomberg

Taiwan yesterday urged China to provide information on the whereabouts of a Taiwanese activist who

went missing after joining pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong this month.

Morrison Lee (李孟居) traveled to Hong Kong for a vacation on Aug. 18 and attended one of the anti-extradition bill protests, Fangliao Township (枋寮) Mayor Archer Chen (陳亞麟) told Bloomberg News.

Lee serves as an unpaid adviser to the Pingtung County township, Chen said.

Lee was scheduled to travel to Shenzhen, China, for business two days later.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 28 August, 2019
By: Jake Chen

Taiwan's offshore Penghu Islands. (CNA Photo)[/caption]Taiwan’s offshore Penghu Islands. (CNA Photo)[/caption] A popular travel website has declared the Penghu Islands one of the ten most photogenic places in the world.

The Penghu Islands is a chain of 90 islands in the Taiwan Strait. It’s a popular tourist destination known for its architecture, and above all, for its beaches.

Travel website KLOOK recently selected the islands as one of the ten most photogenic locations in the world. Lin Yao-min, the head of marketing for KLOOK Taiwan, says that more and more tourists are shifting their attention from Taiwan proper to its offshore islands because of the different experiences the islands offer.

Also spots that made the list include Eze Village in the south of France, the Seto Island Sea in Japan, and the Kakku Pagodas in Myanmar.    [FULL  STORY]

FCW
Date: Aug 28, 2019
By: Steve Kelman

I am spending this week chairing an executive education program for 45 mid- and senior-level civil servants from Taiwan, and of course following the daily news reports on the protests in Hong Kong. So this week I will depart from my normal blog themes to reflect on the significance of what is going on in these two small places.

I have been talking with my Taiwanese students about how it is that young people in Taiwan are ardent advocates of their country keeping itself outside China’s control. And we all have been watching the hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people (in a place with a population of only 7 million), mostly young, taking to the streets to protest Chinese control.

A sober view of the world's realities suggests that this should not be happening. This is so for a number of reasons. For starters, both Hong Kong and Taiwan are Confucian societies, whose cultural tradition is based on hierarchy and those below listening to those above, and on harmony, not rocking the boat. A common view — and one eagerly embraced by the Chinese government – is that Chinese culture therefore is inconsistent with democracy, which is often presented as a Western rather than an Asian idea.

The second reason is the rise of China. China’s economic rise has been very dramatic. In 1997, when Hong Kong was returned to China, tiny Hong Kong’s GNP was fully 18% of China’s. Today Hong Kong’s GNP is just 3% of China’s. China is alive with business opportunities for people in both places.    [FULL  STORY]

Over 80 kg of semi-finished ketamine seized by police in Sanzhi District

Taiwan Times
Date: 2019/08/28
By:  Central News Agency

TAIPEI (CNA) – Police seized over 80 kilograms of drugs in a raid on a ketamine factory in New Taipei on Monday and arrested five people believed to have been running the operation, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) reported Wednesday (Aug. 28).

Acting on a tip-off, investigators from the Shilin District Prosecutors' Office raided the illegal facility, which was housed in a rented residence in New Taipei's Sanzhi District, the CIB said at a news conference. During the raid, investigators arrested five suspects and seized 0.38 kg of ketamine, 80 kg of semi-finished drugs, manufacturing equipment, raw materials, and 279 barrels of ethanol, toluene, and ethyl acetate, the bureau said.

Two of the suspects — a 57-year-old man surnamed Liu and a 69-year-old man identified as Lin — allegedly were funding the operation and had hired the other three people to work there, according to the CIB. One suspect, a 36-year-old terminal cancer patient surnamed Lai, had been paid NT$1 million (US$33,000) to manage the production of the ketamine, the CIB said.

In April, Lai traveled to Malaysia to learn how to manufacture ketamine, before returning to Taiwan via Cambodia, the bureau said. The other two people arrested were identified as Chen, 27, who worked as Lai's assistant, and a storehouse guard surnamed Ho, 41.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/08/28
By: Huang Kuo-fang and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, Aug. 28 (CNA) A passenger caught dodging train fares was indicted by Chiayi prosecutors on Wednesday for stabbing a railway police officer to death in southern Chiayi City last month.

The 54-year-old passenger surnamed Cheng (鄭) has been detained for homicide and obstructing an officer in the discharge of his duties since he stabbed 24-year-old railway police officer Lee Cheng-han (李承翰) on a train from Tainan to Taipei on July 3, when he was found to not have a valid ticket.

Lee died in hospital the next day.    [SOURCE]

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 29, 2019
By: Lin Chia-nan  /  Staff reporter

Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee, left, and Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

president Dan Larhammar, right, witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Department of International Cooperation and Science Education Director-General Huang Hsin-ya, second right, and Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research chief executive officer Lars Hultman, second left, at the academy in Stockholm on Tuesday.

Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Science and Technology

Taiwan is to increase collaboration with Sweden on information and communication, space and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the Ministry of Science and Technology said yesterday after signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a Swedish research foundation.

A delegation led by Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基) on Sunday left for a week-long trip to Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Chen on Tuesday met with Swedish Minister for Higher Education and Research Matilda Ernkrans, the first-ever meeting between the two nations’ science and education ministers, the ministry said.

The two nations are jointly engaged in 15 projects under the EU’s research and innovation initiative named Horizon 2020, it said.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 27 August, 2019
By: Natalie Tso

Climbing Jade Mountain[/caption] An 8-year old boy made the news this week for an amazing feat. He climbed all the way up Taiwan’s highest mountain, Jade Mountain – and he did it to fulfill a promise he made to his late mother.

This 8-year old boy is climbing Taiwan’s tallest mountain, the 3,952 meter Jade Mountain…all for the love of his late mother.  They had planned to go up together one day, but she died last year so he took her picture up with him. He believes mommy is in heaven, so he went up to be closer to her. He made it all the way to the peak and said, “Mommy, I carried you to the peak of Jade Mountain!”

He fulfilled his promise to climb up the mountain for her  591 days after she passed away. "I took her to see Taiwan’s highest mountain," he said. "You took Mommy to see the highest mountain right?" asked a reporter. "[To see] the prettiest scenery," he said.    [FULL  STORY]

Teresa Teng's angelic voice defied censorship and continues to reverberate through time.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/08/27
By: By Zuzana Shejbalová

Teresa Teng, or Teng Li-chun (鄧麗君), was a Taiwanese singer and one of the "Five Great Asian Divas" of the 1970s and 1980s, alongside Judy Ongg, Agnes Chan, Ou-Yang FeiFei and Yu Yar.

She was born on January 29, 1953 and unfortunately died at only 42 on May 8, 1995, suffering an asthma attack while on vacation in Thailand. She remains one of the most successful singers of the Mandarin-speaking world. She was born to a waishengren (外省人) family, one of the many that settled in Taiwan following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War. Teng’s singing won her talent competition awards at a young age and she left school early to become a pop-star.

She had a voice for both classic folk songs and contemporary ballads, sounding sweet yet powerful. Her style also reflected a transnational ethos. She covered traditional folk songs accompanied by Western-style orchestration. Many of Teng’s songs were Mandarin renditions of Japanese hits, the orchestration of which had characteristics of Japanese popular music. She also recorded songs in Taiwanese Hokkien, Cantonese, Japanese, Indonesian, and English; a multilingual approach that greatly contributed to her expansive audience.

Teng was known across Southeast Asia and her fame spread to China in the 1970s and 1980s despite censorship. As the child of a military family, she often performed for the troops and became known as the “soldier’s sweetheart." The immensity of her popularity gave birth to the expression, “By day, Deng Xiao-ping rules, but by night, Teresa Teng rules.” That is, people listened to Deng because they had to, but people listened to Teng because they wanted to.    FULL  STORY]