Initial reports mention 5 passengers gravely injured

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/03/09
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A bus carrying pilgrims home flipped sideways on the No.3 Freeway in Changhua County Saturday, leaving 33 people injured, including five seriously.

The bus was carrying 32 passengers home to Kaohsiung from a religious event in Miaoli County, the Central News Agency reported.

The driver of a car behind the bus said told rescue workers that the vehicle had suddenly lost control, hit the median and flipped over across two lanes on the freeway near the town of Hemei just before 4:45 p.m. Saturday.

Some of the injured managed to leave the bus out of their own accord, but all passengers and the bus driver were still ferried to hospitals in the region. The emergency services said they had mobilized 19 ambulances, 14 fire trucks and 79 rescue workers to address the situation.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/03/09
By: Elaine Hou, Wang Chao-yu and Ko Lin 
Taipei, March 9 (CNA) Taiwan’s Navy Command said Saturday it will seek compensation from a foreign-registered tanker that collided with one of its ships docked in the port of Keelung early Saturday morning.

The incident occurred around 1:30 a.m., when a Saudi oil/chemical tanker NCC SAMA accidentally hit the Knox-class frigate Ning Yang (FF-938) when entering a port terminal in Keelung.

No one was injured, but the Navy vessel sustained a dent on the port side bow upon impact, the Navy Command said in a statement.

The SAMA was scheduled to unload 3,100 tons of ethylene glycol in Keelung when it arrived in the port. Neither ship reported any leaks following the collision, the Maritime and Port Bureau said.
[FULL  STORY]

WRITTEN INVITATION: The US lawmaker urged his nation’s secretary of health not to undervalue Taiwan’s financial and technical contributions to global health initiatives

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 10, 2019
By: Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

US Representative Ted Yoho on Friday sent a letter to US Secretary of Health and Human Services

Alex Azar, urging him to visit Taiwan next month to attend an international workshop on public health and advocate for Taiwan’s participation in the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA).

“I would like to bring to your attention the upcoming Global Cooperation and Training Framework [GCTF] meeting that Taiwan will be hosting from April 30 to May 3, 2019, in Taipei. I urge you to attend this important event,” Yoho said in the letter.

This year’s GCTF event, a joint Taiwan-US program established in 2015, is to be an international workshop on treatment guidelines for drug-resistant tuberculosis, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

Through the GCTF, Taiwan and the US have conducted training programs for experts to combat Middle East respiratory syndrome, dengue fever and the Zika virus, Yoho said, urging the US not to undervalue Taiwan’s financial and technical contributions to global health initiatives.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 08 March, 2019
By: Paula Chao

President Tsai Ing-wen says that Taiwan leads Asia when it comes to gender equality in the workplace.

In a Facebook post marking International Women’s Day, Tsai said a World Bank report shows that Taiwan is outperforming other Asian countries. After examining women’s rights in eight categories, the report gave Taiwan an overall gender equality score of 91 out of 100.    [FULL  STORY]

This is not just a Han Kuo-yu problem. This is a Taiwan problem.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/03/08
By: Stellina Chen
Taiwan’s ghastly treatment of South and Southeast Asian migrant workers and students has spent time in the news this week. Amid stories of alleged work scams targeting Filipino graduate students, a policy stating that migrant detainees must pay for their own food, and more horror stories from Taiwan’s deep sea fishing industry, one item has raised the most eyebrows: Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) has come under fire for using a racist term to refer to Filipinos, apparently questioning whether society will accept “Marias” becoming teachers.

The term “Maria” has been used in Taiwan as a derogatory term referring to those with darker skin, usually foreign workers who are part of Taiwan’s 700,000-strong migrant workforce. Han’s comments rightly drew a vicious backlash from social media users and prominent Taiwanese personalities.

“If ‘Maria’ refers to those who work hard to earn money, raise families and pursue their dreams, then I am a ‘Maria,’ you are a ‘Maria,’ hundreds of thousands of ‘Marias’ are working to prop up Taiwan and many other countries around the world,” wrote David Liu, a writer from Kaohsiung who now lives in Sweden.

On Wednesday, an advertisement from Tungnan University circulated online in which the school advertised its South and Southeast Asian students to employers as “highly cooperative” and willing to do “taxing, filthy and dangerous shift work.” The eight-page ad bragged that its students were cheaper than migrant workers, allowing companies to save at least NT$3,628 (US$117) per month by not paying fees for health and labor insurance.    [FULL  STORY]

Not owner, but employee of transportation firm at fault: reports

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/03/08 
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A Mercedes worth NT$7 million (US$226,500) was stopped by police after a four-minute drive without license plates, and smashed into scrap metal, reports said Friday.

In November 2017, a man from Taichung named Liu (劉) had a Mercedes S550 imported from the United States through the harbor of Keelung, the Apple Daily reported.

He had asked a transportation company to tow the vehicle first for an inspection at the port, but instead, an employee drove the car straight onto the road without license plates, the report said.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/03/08
By: Angie Chen and Emerson Lim

Taipei, March 8 (CNA) Two Taiwanese nationals apprehended last October for alleged telecom fraud were deported to China by the Philippine authorities Friday, the third incident of the kind within a year.

Philippine immigration officers escorted the two Taiwanese and a Chinese onto a commercial flight to Beijing, all three of whom are alleged to be members of a telecom fraud ring.

Officials from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Manila expressed grave concern over the deportations.

The two Taiwanese citizens were among a group of 13 Taiwanese and 12 Chinese arrested by Philippine law enforcement officers last October.    [FULL  STORY]

Residents of Daguan Community in New Taipei say the Tsai administration has not helped them in their fight against forced eviction.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/03/07
By: Brian Hioe

Clashes broke out between residents of the Daguan Community and police in front of the Executive Yuan on Wednesday morning. Daguan Community is a military dependents’ village in New Taipei City, whose residents have been facing the threat of eviction for several years. However, most recently, Daguan residents received a notice on Mar. 4 that their homes will be forcibly dismantled on Mar. 18, hence the demonstration in front of the Executive Yuan this morning.

Student activists who have been working with Daguan residents and the residents themselves originally called for a press conference in front of the Executive Yuan at 10 a.m. this morning. In speeches, students and Daguan residents criticized the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration for promising a peaceful settlement that would address residents’ needs.

In particular, many residents of Daguan are elderly, impoverished, and would have no place to go if they are evicted from their homes. Some have been living in Daguan for over 40 or 50 years. As such, the threat of eviction is viewed by some as something of a death sentence, as even for those with places to go, residents would be unable to accommodate the dramatic shift in lifestyle if resettled.

Indeed, a number of residents have occupational injuries or suffer from long-term diseases. Some dismiss protests by residents of military dependents’ villages as frivolous, seeing as military dependents’ villages are usually run-down and residents are given comparatively higher-quality and more expensive housing in return. But among the residents of Daguan Community are individuals old enough and infirm enough that they are actually unable to use elevators and would be unable to use them in a high-rise housing complex in order to get to their homes if, like other evicted military dependents’ villages, that is where they are placed.    [FULL  STORY]

China’s Air Force modernization has started to create an imbalance: Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/03/07
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – All options are on the table for the new fighter jets from the United States, the Ministry of National Defense said Thursday in response to media reports saying Taiwan wanted to buy 66 F-16V jets with a total price tag of US$13 billion (NT$400 billion).

The strengthening of China’s air force had started to cause a certain level of imbalance across the Taiwan Strait, military officials said at a news conference Thursday.

The ministry said its letter to the U.S. did not mention requests for any specific aircraft, but choices would be made and prices discussed according to the reply, the Central News Agency reported.

All modern jets, whether F-15, F-16, F-18 or F-35 were options to be considered, officers said.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/03/07
By: Yang Su-min and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, March 7 (CNA) A packet of pork wonton originating in China has tested positive for African swine

fever (ASF), bringing the total number of such cases to 30, Taiwan’s Central Emergency Operation Center for ASF said Thursday.

The packet of pork wonton was found discarded in a bin at the Port of Taipei by a passenger who traveled from Pingtan in China’s Fujian Province by cruise ship Feb. 20, the center said.

Samples were sent to the Council of Agriculture’s Animal Health Research Institute for laboratory testing and found to contain sequences of gene fragments identical to those of the swine fever virus strain in China, according to the center.

Since October 2018, a total of 30 pork products from China have been confirmed as infected with ASF, including one in October, two in November, four in December, 11 in January, 11 in February and one in March.    [FULL  STORY]