Radio Taiwan International
Date: 20 November, 2018
By: Shirley Lin

Chiayi mayoral candidate is seen atop her campaign truck with her supporters.
There are just four days left before the mayoral and county commissioner elections in Taiwan on Saturday. The opposition Kuomintang’s Chiayi mayoral candidate Huang Min-hui was seen on Tuesday on her campaign truck with her supporters sweeping the streets to gain votes.

Such campaign trucks are commonplace around election time. It has a standing platform on top with metal railings on the sides. Huang is in the front with a red sash across her chest while a supporter speaks into a microphone. Her speeches and slogans are broadcast through four large-size speakers, two mounted at the front of the truck and two at the back.

Meanwhile, everyone is seen holding up two fingers to signify Huang’s number on the ballot.    [SOURCE]

Voters must offer the government guidance on marriage equality.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/11/20
By: Stellina Chen

This Saturday, Taiwan will vote on no fewer than five referendums relating to gender equity and LGBTQ rights.

This situation is a far cry from the euphoria that greeted the Constitutional Court’s decision of May 24, 2017, which ruled that a prohibition against same-sex marriage written into Taiwan’s Civil Code was unconstitutional.

The court ruled that the government had two years in which to legislate for the change. Yet despite campaigning on the back of pledges to support marriage equality, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)’s government dragged its heels, and later the same year the legislature passed significant amendments to the Referendum Act that have opened the door for the country to vote on the issue once again.

President Tsai calculated that there is a greater political risk in upsetting the forces of conservatism opposed to gender equitable marriage, embodied by the Happiness of the Next Generation Alliance, than the community so ardently represented by 100,000 or so people attending last weekend’s pro-LGBT rights rally in Taipei.
[FULL  STORY]

More than 4,500 kilos of illegally imported meat found from August to November

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/11/20
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Tests have turned up traces of the African swine fever virus in two cases of pork imported from China by travelers, the Council of Agriculture announced Tuesday.

The pork was among 1,818 meat items totaling 4,515 kilograms brought illegally into Taiwan by travelers and intercepted between August 1 and November 11, the Central News Agency reported.

The total included 238 cases or 389 kilograms imported by way of the shipping links between the Chinese province of Fujian and the Taiwanese-held islands of Kinmen and Matsu, customs officials said.

The recent “Singles Day” November 11 online shopping bonanza also revealed 41 cases of pork products being smuggled in by mail or delivery service.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/11/20
By: Chang Ming-hsuan and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Nov. 20 (CNA) Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ordered the recall of high blood pressure medication produced by Hsinchu County-based Genovate Biotechnology Co. after the drug was found to contain a carcinogenic substance.

The recall was not made public until Tuesday, after 22 batches of “Prevan Film-Coated Tables 80mg” and “Prevan Film-Coated Tables 160 mg” from Genovate Biotech’s production line were found to have been made with a raw material imported from India tainted by the carcinogenic chemical substance N-Nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA).

The company began recalling the contaminated medication Saturday, the same day the FDA ordered all tainted tablets be taken off shelves at medical institutes and pharmacies around the country, the agency said in a statement released on Tuesday.

FDA division chief Hung Kuo-teng (洪國登) told CNA via telephone that a total of 2.28 million tables — labeled with the expiration dates July 30, 2022 and Nov. 4, 2019, respectively — will be removed by Dec. 19.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 21, 2018
By: Staff writer, with CNA, PHILADELPHIA

Sun An-tso (孫安佐), the son of Taiwanese celebrities Sun Peng (孫鵬) and Di Ying

(狄鶯), is to be deported and permanently barred from the US for possessing firearms, a federal district court in Pennsylvania ruled on Monday.

Sun An-tso, who was arrested in March after threatening to shoot up his school, is expected to be deported within four to six weeks.

In a sentencing hearing at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the 18-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of being an alien in possession of ammunition in contravention of 18 US Code 922 (g).

He was sentenced to time served, about five-and-a-half months, and required to forfeit the ammunition in his possession, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said in a statement.    [FULL  STORY]

The chill grip of self-censorship has taken hold in Hong Kong.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/11/19
By: By James Durston, Global Voices

Attempts to block a controversial Chinese novelist from speaking at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival have raised fears about the future of artistic expression in Hong Kong.

Ma Jian, whose books have been banned in mainland China since 1987, and who has been living in exile in the UK since 2011, was due to appear on Nov. 10 to take part in one debate about Hong Kong literature, and in another to discuss his latest novel “China Dream.”

The novel takes a political swing at Chinese president Xi Jinping and was described by publisher Penguin Books as “a biting satire of totalitarianism that reveals what happens to a nation when it is blinded by materialism and governed by violence and lies.” The book’s Chinese version will be published in Taiwan in 2019.

Ma has not found a publisher in Hong Kong, but this comes as no surprise. In 2015, five Hong Kong booksellers vanished and were revealed to have been detained by Chinese authorities. One of those booksellers, Guo Minhai, is still being held, according to Amnesty International. All five were known for carrying books that covered politically sensitive topics.    [FULL  STORY]

Magnitude 4.6 temblor jars northeastern Taiwan’s Yilan County 

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/11/20
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A magnitude 4.6 earthquake rocked northeastern Taiwan’s Yilan County at 12:31 a.m. this morning, according to the Central Weather Bureau (CWB).

The epicenter of the temblor was 38.4 kilometers southeast of Yilan County Hall at a depth of 38.5 kilometers, based on CWB data.

The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, registered 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tiered intensity scale in Yilan County, while an intensity level of 3 was recorded in Hualien County. An intensity level of 2 was felt in Taoyuan City, Taichung City, New Taipei City, Taipei City, and Hsinchu County, while an intensity level of 1 Nantou County, Miaoli County, Hsinchu City, and Keelung City.

Located along the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, Taiwan uses an intensity scale of 1 to 7, which gauges the degree to which a quake is felt in a specific location.

No injuries were reported from the quake at the time of publication.   [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/11/19
By: Wei Shu and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, Nov. 19 (CNA) Two leading technology research institutions in Taiwan

received five 2018 R&D 100 Awards Nov. 16 in Orlando, Florida, with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) winning three and the Institute for Information Industry (III) two.

The ITRI winners this year comprise a portable Ultraviolet-C LED water sterilizer system that is the world’s first solar-powered flow-water sterilizer for emergency use. It produces clean water by killing water-borne bacteria with UVC LED technology, the ITRI said in a statement issued Monday.

Another winning technology is a single-bath supercritical fluid dyeing (SFD) process for PET or blended elastic textiles that uses carbon dioxide instead of water as the dyeing solvent, eliminating wastewater and helping to cut down on pollution, according to the ITRI.

ITRI’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) police patrol system that coordinates smart charging and UAV shift changes to boost surveillance capabilities and allow for less human involvement and risk during patrols also won an honor.    [FULL  STORY]

UNSCRIPTED? A Hong Kong paper reported a possible Chinese ban, but one leading movie figure dismissed the idea and the awards committee said it had not heard of it

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 20, 2018
By: Staff writer, with CNA

A controversy that erupted at Saturday night’s Golden Horse Awards ceremony

shows no signs of ending as the Chinese-language Apple Daily’s Hong Kong edition yesterday reported that Chinese companies have been banned from entering films coproduced with Taiwanese firms in Golden Horse events.

The paper said the directive came from the Chinese Communist Party’s publicity department in the wake of Taiwanese director Fu Yue (傅榆) saying during her acceptance speech for best documentary for Our Youth in Taiwan (我們的青春，在台灣) that her greatest wish was that one day Taiwan “can be treated as a truly independent entity.”

Asked to confirm the report, the Golden Horse Awards executive committee said: “We have not heard about this. Applications for next year’s Golden Horse Awards begin in June.”

The Cross-Strait Films Exchange Committee said it had not “heard of or received any information” about a Chinese movie boycott.
[FULL  STORY]

Conservatives seek to limit freedom of homosexuals to wed in Nov. 24 votes

Nikkei Asian Review
Date: November 18, 2018
By: CHENG TING-FANG and LAULY LI, Nikkei staff writers

TAIPEI — Victoria Hsu plans to wed her partner as soon as same-sex marriage becomes legal in Taiwan next May.

“We have waited so long for this day and we have been through many ups and downs,” the 46-year-old human rights lawyer told the Nikkei Asian Review. “While heterosexual couples can get married in 30 minutes, we’ve had to fight for decades to formulate legal documents ourselves, to initiate lawsuits ourselves, to go through endless debates for equal rights ourselves.”

“It’s been a very very long journey,” said the prominent lesbian rights activist.

But Hsu’s plans may be dashed if conservative forces win out in a series of referendums on gay rights being held Nov. 24, and manage to limit the rights of gays wanting to wed. Five out of 10 plebiscites will be questions on issues such as education about homosexuality and regulations on same-sex marriage.
[FULL  STORY]