US Congressman Ted Yoho invites Vice President Mike Pence to visit Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/02/27
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As this year marks the 40th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act, Republican U.S. Congressman of Florida Ted Yoho told UDN yesterday (Feb. 26) that he has sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence recommending that he visit Taiwan.

When asked by UDN yesterday whether the U.S. would send high level officials to mark the 40th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act, Yoho, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he has already put forth a proposal to invite Vice President Pence, as well as U.S. State Department personnel, to visit Taiwan.

Yoho said that he sent a letter to Pence on the subject a few months ago. However, the Office of the Vice President and State Department have yet to respond to inquiries on the matter.

In addition, Yoho pointed out that he concurs with other congressmen that Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California should invite Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to address a joint session of Congress. Yoho said this would be of great significance, not only because it would be a first, but also because it would show that the U.S. recognized Taiwan as a country and Tsai as the president and leader of that country.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/27
By: Chang Ming-hsuan and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Feb. 27 (CNA) The Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Wednesday that it has issued

a recall order for three blood pressure-lowering drugs, namely Exnortan, Daianxo, and Co-Daianxo, which were found to contain trace amounts of a carcinogen.

The immediate recall follows similar action over the past few months by the FDA after it was revealed that one of the key ingredients in blood pressure drugs produced in India and China was tainted with the carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA).

The latest information came from two pharmaceutical firms, which said they had found NDMA in the ingredients used to make the blood pressure drugs Exnortan film coated tablets (5/80 milligram), Daianxo film coated tablets (160mg) and Co-Daianxo capsules (80/12.5mg), FDA deputy division chief Wu Ming-mei (吳明美) said at a press conference.

Some 6 million tablets have already been shipped, Wu said, adding that there is no telling how many are on the Taiwan market.    [FULL  STORY]

STILL ATTENTIVE: ‘We will never forget and we will not stop’ seeking the truth, seeking those accountable and promoting education, President Tsai Ing-wen said

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 28, 2019
By: Staff writer, with CNA

The government is seeking to identify potential victims of the 228 Incident who were previously unrecorded,

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, adding that a new report on the brutal crackdown would be issued later this year.

Tsai made the remarks while receiving an overseas group of family members of victims.

In her address to the group, she said that victims’ families have long been concerned about the progress of transitional justice, adding that without their reminders, the government would not be able to honestly face the important event in the nation’s history and reflect on it, nor would there be any progress.

Since the beginning of Taiwan’s democratization, the government has made a series of efforts to implement transitional justice, including admitting its wrongdoing, issuing apologies to the victims of the Incident, launching investigations and offering compensation, Tsai said.    [FULL  STORY]

Huang Shih-hsiu’s new nuclear power referendums contain vague, unrealistic language that fails to properly inform the people of Taiwan, writes Hsieh Pei-yi of Taiwan’s Environmental Jurists Association.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/02/26
By: Hsieh Pei-yi

Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修), the leader of the pro-nuclear group Nuclear Mythbusters, recently proposed a new referendum:

“Do you agree that the Legislative Yuan should formulate a special law which includes an accountability mechanism to increase nuclear energy and reduce coal power, and that they should achieve a ratio of nuclear energy generation which must not be lower than the energy generated from coal before the year 2030?”

The referendum question deliberately incorporates keywords such as “accountability” and “reduce coal” that are easily recognized by the general public. Due to this, it is common for people who do not fully understand Taiwan’s current energy situation to be influenced by the argument and vote in its favor.

With air pollution as serious as it is, everyone hopes we can minimize the amount of energy generated from coal, and through accountability mechanisms, we hope that government officials will take responsibility for environmental pollution. However, the fear-mongering language of this referendum will not help to “reduce coal” as its only purpose is increasing nuclear power by having Taiwan’s energy sector substantially rely on nuclear – which runs in the opposite direction to the world’s current trend of anti-nuclear and pro-renewable energy developments.    [FULL  STORY]

The bill is to be subject to legislative deliberation next month

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/02/26
By: Ryan Drillsma, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan Procedure Committee announced Tuesday that the Executive Yuan’s same-sex union proposal (The Enforcement Act of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748) will enter the Legislative Yuan’s agenda on March 5.

Democratic Progressive Party legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said the DPP backs the bill to go through a second reading, while Kuomintang representative Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said the party will undertake discussions before deciding whether it supports this motion.

New Power Party founding leader Freddy Lim (林昶佐) also put forward a draft bill for safeguarding same-sex marriage rights, which passed the threshold for legislative deliberation on Feb. 23. Lim said Tuesday that the proposal is only a draft as it must await further discussion and approval by pro-marriage groups, who wish to wait for the outcome of next month’s deliberations.

The Executive Yuan released a monumental draft bill which will act as the legal basis for same-sex marriages in Taiwan on Feb. 20. The bill came two months prior to the final date (May 24) by which the country’s Constitutional Court ruled same-sex unions must be legally implemented.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/26
By: Han Ting-ting, Elizabeth Hsu, and Frances Huang 

Taipei, Feb. 26 (CNA) A Taiwan-developed horror video game being boycotted by Chinese netizens over an image mocking Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) was removed from global digital distribution platform Steam on Tuesday just seven days after its release.

In a post on its Facebook page, the game’s Taiwanese developer, Red Candle Games, said it pulled “Devotion” (還願) from Steam because of technical problems and also alluded to the boycott caused by the artwork that angered Chinese users.

“Due to technical issues that cause unexpected crashes, we are pulling off from steam store to have another complete QA (quality assurance) check,” the company said in an English-language statement.

“At the same time we’d like to take this opportunity to ease the heightened pressure in our community resulting from our previous Art Material Incident. Our team would also review our game material once again making sure no other unintended materials was inserted in,” Red Candle Games said.    [FULL STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 27, 2019  
By: Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

Taipei police yesterday detained members of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) for brandishing

a weapon and breaching assembly regulations at a rally outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, during which CUPP Chairman Chang An-le (張安樂) stumbled and fell on a prop coffin.

Chang, a former leader of the Bamboo Union gang, led a CUPP contingent to the legislature’s front entrance in the morning to protest remarks by Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) that in the event of an attack by China, he would never surrender, but would protect the nation by fighting to the end, even if he only had a broom.

Chang, who is also known as the “White Wolf,” had party members transport a wooden casket on a small truck that they intended to give to Su, who they said should not call for resistance to a Chinese military invasion, because that would result in many Taiwanese fatalities.

Amid a cordon of police to counter the protest, Chang stood on the truck and ordered that the casket be unloaded. Several police officers tried to block the unloading, resulting in the casket falling sideways, with its lid open, onto the grass of a lane divider on the boulevard in front of the legislature.    [FULL  STORY]

November’s nuclear power referendum has only set the stage for political battles still to come.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/02/25
By: Brian Hioe

Pro-nuclear groups in Taiwan continue to push for nuclear energy, as observed in three recent referendum pushes on nuclear energy-related issues. These referendums are organized by the groups responsible for the referendum on nuclear energy held in November during nine-in-one elections.

Namely, despite the fact that the referendum in November was successful in overturning previous legal stipulations that Taiwan was to aim towards a “nuclear-free homeland” in which nuclear energy has been phased out entirely by 2025, the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has suggested that it still intends to gradually phase out nuclear energy. As such, nuclear advocates are pushing for another referendum on nuclear energy, seeing the Tsai administration as intending to shrug off the results of the referendum.

At the same time, it is to be questioned to what extent this proves a false political issue. It would have proven a difficult task for the Tsai administration to make the necessary shifts in Taiwan’s energy grid in order to phase out nuclear energy by 2025 anyway. Given the lack of concrete steps taken by the government to phase out nuclear energy, it is thought by some that the Tsai administration never intended to actually accomplish its promised goal of phasing out nuclear energy by 2025.    [FULL  STORY]

After learning the good news, users of the social media have filled the page with positive comments

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/02/25
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – As the ongoing 2019 Taiwan Lantern Festival is receiving rave reviews from media, media reports said that the organizer of this year’s national lantern festival, Pingtung County Government, has been invited to participate in the Copenhagen Light Festival next year, Liberty Times reported on Monday.

Taipei Representative Office in Denmark posted the good news on its Facebook page on Feb. 21, saying that the culture bureau of Indre By in down Copenhagen had invited Pingtung County Government to participate in Copenhagen Light Festival in February 2020.

Three lantern artworks have been invited to be displayed in Copenhagen in August this year, the organizer said.

After learning the good news, users of the social media have filled the page with positive comments and comparisons between the Pingtung and Kaohsiung lantern festivals, Liberty Times reported.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/25
By: Chen Wei-ting, Wang Yang-yu and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Feb. 25 (CNA) The idea of confiscating vehicles used by drunk drivers in traffic accidents has

received the support of Taiwan’s transportation minister, but he said supporting measures are needed to make sure vehicle seizures are applied consistently.

Speaking at a hearing of the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, Transportation Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) also said he agreed that those causing another person’s death while driving under the influence (DUI) should be charged with voluntary manslaughter.

He said his ministry will work with the Ministry of Justice to raise the penalties for drunk driving.

Lin was responding to an appeal by ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) to confiscate vehicles as a remedy for the ongoing spate of DUI offenses in Taiwan that continue to take a heavy toll on human life.    [FULL STORY]