18-year-old went missing after swimming in the Weser River in northwestern Germany.

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/06/12

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The body of a Taiwanese teenage boy who went missing in Germany last week has been found, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday (June 12).

The 18-year-old exchange student, surnamed Tsai, studied at Nordrhein-Westfalen, in Germany. Last week, he went camping with friends on the banks of River Weser in Minden, reported Central News Agency Wednesday.

After going for a swim in the river, Tsai went missing on Friday (June 7). The local police and fire departments formed a search team of 70 people to look for the teen. On the early morning of June 11, a local walker found his body at a location about 5 kilometers from where he was last seen.

His parents flew to Germany and identified his body, which will be autopsied to confirm the cause of death.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/06/12 22:27:50
By: Elaine Hou and Emerson Lim

Taipei, June 12 (CNA) Government agencies in Taiwan were placed on high alert on Wednesday after an

invasive caterpillar species called fall armyworm (FAW) was found on several farms in three counties, a Cabinet spokesperson said.

The presence of FAW, which are highly destructive to crops, has been reported on farms in Miaoli, Yilan and Chiayi counties over the past few days, prompting Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) convene an inter-agency meeting on Wednesday to discuss control of the crop-destroying pest, Cabinet spokesperson Kolas Yotaka said.

At a press briefing, she said the pests were carried on the recent southwesterly winds from China, where some 18 provinces have been battling an invasion of FAW since January.

The caterpillars, which are the larvae of the podoptera frugiperda moth, get their name from the way they advance with military precision to destroy the leaves and stems of plants.    [FULL  STORY]

PUBLIC: Project 2049 Institute members vowed to ensure that Taiwanese could decide their own future during a meeting streamed on Facebook

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 13, 2019
By: Lin Chia-nan  /  Staff reporter

Taiwan’s future should be determined by its nearly 24 million citizens without outside influence, Project 2049

Institute chairman Richard Armitage yesterday told a meeting attended by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), institute president John Gastright and other institute members.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and National Security Council Secretary-General David Lee (李大維) also joined the meeting at the Presidential Office, part of which was broadcast on Tsai’s Facebook page.

Calling Armitage — who served as US deputy secretary of state during former US president George W. Bush’s first term in office — an old friend of Taiwan and hers, Tsai said she was glad to meet him again after his visit last year.

She also thanked him for introducing her during a videoconference she held with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Brookings Institution and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on April 9 as part of an event marking the 40th anniversary of the US’ Taiwan Relations Act.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 11 June, 2019
By: John Van Trieste

An agricultural pest called the fall armyworm has been discovered in Taiwan. The spread of the pest could have severe consequences for Taiwan’s farmland, and officials are already working to stop its spread.

The fall armyworm is a tiny creature that causes tremendous damage. These pests damage 353 types of plants, among them important crops like corn, rice, and cotton. They spread at a prodigious pace too. They only arrived in Asia last year but can already be found across large swathes of the continent.

And now, officials have confirmed, they are in Taiwan.    [FULL  STORY]

 

President Tsai Ing-wen is locked in a fierce primary battle with her former premier, William Lai.

The Diploma
Date: June 11, 2019
By: Nick Aspinwall

Polling companies in Taiwan are making calls to landlines and cell phones to determine whether President Tsai

Ing-wen will see off an unprecedented primary challenge from her former premier, William Lai.

A public opinion poll began on Tuesday to ask 15,000 voters, regardless of party affiliation, to choose the presidential nominee of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) by indicating their preferences in hypothetical head-to-head matchups with two leading opposition candidates, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu of the Kuomintang (KMT) and independent Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je.

A party official said Tuesday the result of the poll is expected to be announced on Thursday afternoon.

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Tsai, who is in her first term as president, announced she would seek a second term during a February interview with CNN. However, her campaign was thrown into disarray when Lai, who served as her premier until his resignation in January, surprisingly announced his entry into the race.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/06/11
By: Yeh Su-ping, Wang Cheng-chung
and Emerson Lim

Taipei, June 11 (CNA) The result of the opinion poll that will determine the winner of the

ruling Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) presidential primary is expected to be announced Thursday, a party official has said.

The poll, being conducted simultaneously by five different polling companies looking to get 3,000 valid responses each, is expected to reach the required 15,000 valid responses by Wednesday, DPP Secretary-General Lo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said Tuesday.

Responses will be tallied Thursday morning and the result should be available by noon that day, Lo said.

Representatives of the two contenders, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and former Premier Lai Ching-te (賴清德), will be invited to monitor the pr2ocess, he said.
[FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Jun 12, 2019 – Page 1　
By Lin Chia-nan  /  Staff reporter

 

Representatives of nearly 8,000 Vietnamese who claim to have suffered from marine pollution caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp

hold a news conference in Taipei yesterday after they filed a lawsuit against the company’s investors.

Almost 8,000 Vietnamese saying they have suffered from marine pollution caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp (台塑河靜鋼鐵興業) yesterday filed a lawsuit in Taipei against the company’s investors, seeking NT$140 million (US$4.4 million) in compensation.

A spill of toxic chemicals from the Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團) unit’s under-construction steel plant in April 2016 caused mass fish deaths in waters off central Vietnam.

After a Vietnamese government report confirmed Formosa Ha Tinh’s accountability, the company in June of that year agreed to pay US$500 million in compensation for discharging water containing chemicals such as phenol, cyanide and iron hydroxides.

A coalition of Taiwanese and Vietnamese groups yesterday morning helped file the lawsuit at the Taipei District Court on behalf of 7,875 Vietnamese plaintiffs against the company’s main investors — FPG, China Steel Corp (中鋼) and Japan’s JFE Steel Corp — as they said many victims have not received compensation.
[FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International 
Date: 10 June, 2019
By: Jake Chen

The Taoyuan Flight Attendants Union is criticizing the government for helping EVA Air undermine an upcoming strike.

Flight attendants from EVA Air, Taiwan’s second largest airline, have been calling for better working conditions for the last several months. Last Friday, workers voted in favor of a strike.

But just days before the vote, EVA Air announced a plan to punish workers that go on strike. The measures include suspending year-end bonuses, salary hikes and ticket discounts for striking workers.

The transportation ministry has said it will help EVA Air carry on with their business during the strike.   FULL  STORY]

South China Morning Post
Date: 10 Jun, 2019
By: Lawrence Chung

The US Pacific Marine Corps has released photos showing a Taiwanese major general and a flag with the island’s emblem at an annual gathering of military leaders from the Indo-Pacific region, in another move certain to infuriate Beijing.

Major General Liu Erh-jung’s attendance at the Pacific Amphibious Leaders Symposium last week was the latest in a series of moves that Taipei said demonstrated closer relations with Washington.

They include Taiwan being on a list of “countries” in a US Department of Defence report on its Indo-Pacific strategy released on June 1. And two days earlier, the White House posted on Instagram a photo of US President Donald Trump congratulating US Air Force Academy graduates – with Taiwan’s flag among those in the background.

In Taipei, some lawmakers said they were the latest signs that ties between Taipei and Washington were normalising. But analysts said that while the gestures showed relations were improving, they should not be seen as evidence Washington planned to normalise ties with the self-ruled island as it was highly unlikely the US would want to go that far.
[FULL  STORY]

President of World Uyghur Congress, Dalai Lama and Rebiya Kadeer were all denied entry to Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/06/10
By: Yu Ping, Taiwan News, Contributing Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, was denied entry to Taiwan by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), a source from Washington D.C. told Taiwan News.

In an exclusive report on June 5, Taiwan News revealed the Tsai administration had denied the Dalai Lama and Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer entry to Taiwan. This is despite the fact that General-Secretary to the President Chen Chu (陳菊) had promised to invite the Dalai Lama to Taiwan on behalf of the president.

Now, a source from Washington D.C. has confirmed that Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, was also denied entry to Taiwan. The news offers a reason for the resignation of former ambassador-at-large, Yang Huang Maysing (楊黃美幸), who said she felt ashamed to call herself a human rights advocate.

The source told Taiwan News that as a German citizen, Isa contacted Taiwan’s representative office in Germany to apply for a visa. He was received by Representative Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉), who promised to submit the application to the government, yet the application was denied.    [FULL  STORY]