The valsartan pills are suspected of containing cancer-causing impurities

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/08/02
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Four brands of drugs made in China and supposed to lower blood pressure were removed from shelves in Taiwan because they were suspected of containing cancer-causing ingredients, the Central News Agency reported Thursday.

The questions about the drugs began last month, when types of valsartan produced in China by Huahai Pharmaceutical (華海製藥公司), based in the province of Zhejiang, were questioned. Thursday’s report by the Food and Drug Administration named similar pills produced by Rundu Pharma (潤都製藥公司) in Zhuhai, in the province of Guangdong.

According to the order to remove the drugs from sale Thursday, a total of more than 24 million pills might be affected, CNA reported.

While research in the European Union brought the presence of potentially carcinogenous NDMA to light in the Huahai products, it was a Taiwanese investigation which uncovered the same element in the pills made by Rundu.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/08/02
By: Shih Hsiu-chuan

Taipei, Aug. 2 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) rebuffed Thursday the argument

that Taiwan should continue to use nuclear energy until the renewable energy industry matures, saying that Taiwan will not face power shortages after it goes nuclear-free by 2025.

Recently, some supporters of nuclear power have expressed doubt as to whether renewable energy will become a viable alternative source of energy and have advocated the continued use of nuclear energy, Tsai said.

Addressing an international forum on new energy, she described that argument as “specious” and “outworn” compared to advanced concepts in energy development.

Tsai’s remarks came two days after former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and former Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) urged the public to support two referendum petitions that seek to reject Tsai’s policy of decommissioning all Taiwan’s nuclear reactors by 2025.
[FULL  STORY]

GRACE PERIOD: A new program is to allow anyone with student debt to pay only interest for four years, while a program for low-income debtors would be expanded

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 03, 2018
By: Lee Hsin-fang, Wu Po-hsuan and Jonathan Chin  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Premier William Lai (賴清德) yesterday announced changes to a student loan relief

scheme that would make interest-only pay and grace periods on repayment available to more than 500,000 people starting on Sept. 1.

Under current regulations, new graduates are entitled to defer their student loan principle and interest payments for up to one year, while people from certified low or middle-income households or those who make less than NT$30,000 (US$978) per month may apply for a grace period of up to four years.

The government is to introduce a policy that would allow anyone who has begun paying their student debt to apply for the ability to pay only interest for up to four years, the Ministry of Education said.

While more than one interest-only payment period may be granted to the same applicant, the total may not exceed four years, the ministry said.    [FULL  STORY]

J. Michael Cole says that Beijing’s hopes for a gradual reunification of Taiwan with the mainland have been frustrated, not by Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP, but by Taiwanese society’s growing drift from mainland China. Unable to admit this, China has resorted to heavy-handed tactics that is pushing the Taiwanese further away

South China Morning Post 
Date: 02 August, 2018
By: J. Michael Cole

The election of Tsai Ing-wen of the Taiwan-centric Democratic Progressive Party in January 2016 marked the end of a phase in cross-strait relations when Beijing still believed in the possibility of winning the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese through “goodwill” and economic incentives. Since then, Beijing has embraced a strategy that seeks to corner, isolate and punish Taiwan for its intransigence on the unification question.

Although many would ascribe that change in attitude to the 2016 elections and blame the Tsai administration’s refusal to acknowledge the so-called “1992 consensus” for the souring relations, this reckoning actually occurred earlier – two years earlier, in 2014, when the Sunflower student movementderailed the partial rapprochement that had prevailed since 2008 under former president Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang. More than an incident over a particular trade agreement, the movement epitomised a society’s refusal to associate too closely with authoritarian China, a reality that not only contributed to Tsai’s victory but also to the KMT’s dismissal of its initial candidate for the presidency, who was regarded as too ideologically close to Beijing – even for the blue camp’s taste.    [FULL  STORY]

A North Korean travel agency has partnered with Taiwanese proprietors to offer new travel opportunities to prospective Taiwanese visitors.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/08/01
By: Yang

After Kim Jong-un took meetings with his American and South Korean counterparts earlier this year, there is a sense that North Korea is warming up to the outside world. U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking after the June 12 summit, certainly thought so. “They have great beaches,” he told journalistsin Singapore. “You see that whenever they are exploding their cannons into the ocean. I said, boy, look at that view, wouldn’t that make a great condo? And I explained it. I said, instead of doing that, you could have the best hotels in the world.”

On July 19, a North Korean travel agency came to Taipei to tout travel opportunities in the DPRK. In a press conference, the “Mysterious North Korean Immersive Experience Tour Group” was launched, featuring two tour packages: a four-day, three-night tour, and a six-day, five-night excursion, with rates ranging from NT$30,000 (US$980) to NT$60,000 (US$1,960) depending on itineraries. For the first time, Taiwanese travelers who want to visit North Korea will not need to go through third-party agencies.

The initiative was spearheaded by the Korean Heritage International Travel Company. A joint venture between China’s Jiangyin Huaxi International Travel Service and the North Korean National Bureau for Cultural Property Conservation, it is North Korea’s only travel agency which operates overseas. On July 20, in cooperation with Taiwan’s Chung Hsing Travel Service, it celebrated the opening of its Taiwan sales center, symbolizing that North Korean tourism had officially landed in Taiwan.    [FULL  STORY]

Cutesy trash can cries from overflowing garbage in central Taiwan’s Nantou County

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/08/01
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A photo of pink trash can shaped like a tree meant for ordinary waste appears to cry from being overstuffed to the point of spilling out on the ground, while its green counterpart meant for recycling is woefully empty was taken this spring in a nature area in central Taiwan’s Nantou County.

The photographer, Wang Yueh-ling (王悅玲), took the photo in the Shanlinxi Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County’s Zhushan Township on April 22. On June 14, with the caption reading “spewing garbage tears,” Wang posted the photo on Facebook and soon gained nearly 500 likes.

Wang, who is a student at the Graduate Institute of Environmental Education at National Taiwan Normal University, said that she took the photo when her professor took their class to the nature area this spring.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/08/01
By: Ku Chuan and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, Aug. 1 (CNA) A nationwide child care subsidy program that came into effect

Wednesday as part of the government’s efforts to reverse Taiwan’s low birth rate has attracted criticism from parents, government-contracted kindergartens and babysitters, citing a failure to publicize relevant measures in advance.

Under the program, parents who qualify will receive a monthly subsidy of NT$6,000 (US$196) for each child up to the age of two who attends a semi-public private kindergarten or are looked after by babysitters who sign a contract with the government.

However, the the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) only unveiled the guidelines on applications for payments to government-contracted baby care service providers on Tuesday evening, drawing complaints from babysitters and child care centers who were unable to sign contracts with the government before the launch of the program.

Meanwhile, the ministry’s welfare consultation hotline 1957, which integrates various services and resources from public and private institutions, was flooded with calls from those wanting information about the new policy.    [FULL  STORY]

SERIOUS BREACH: Originally slated for a transfer to Penghu, a public outcry led the justice ministry to rethink Lin Chun-yu’s punishment for ‘interrogating’ preschoolers

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 02, 2018
By: Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

Hualien County prosecutor Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) has been suspended for alleged abuse

of authority and his case has been forwarded to the Control Yuan, which is to decide whether to start impeachment proceedings, the Ministry of Justice said yesterday.

Media reports last week said that Lin, claiming that his daughter had been bullied, took two senior police officials to a Hualien City kindergarten on June 21 and June 28, where surveillance footage showed him interrogating children aged two to four.

The footage showed Lin ordering teachers to stand aside as he bellowed and threatened the children in an attempt to find out who had been bullying his daughter.

Some toddlers reportedly urinated on the spot.

The ministry’s Personnel Review Committee yesterday convened a meeting to discuss Lin’s case and decided to suspend him for a serious breach of conduct, effective immediately.    [FULL  STORY]

THE US could be planning a “military invasion” of China in an act of “severe subversion” if it sends marines to guard the de facto US embassy in Taiwan – and Beijing could be forced to retaliate according to Chinese state media.

Express
Date: Aug 1, 2018
By: Matt Drake

A new report indicates the US is to deploy military personnel to the new American

Institute in Taiwan (AIT).

Beijing has warned such a move would be a “subversion of the one-China policy” in an editorial in the Global Times.

It also warned it was grounds for China to deploy “an increasing number of countermeasures which Washington will have to confront”.

Although the decision has not been confirmed, The Global Times warned: “If the US Marines publicly station at the AIT in their uniforms, that would be treated by Beijing as a severe subversion of the one-China policy or even an invasion of the US military of Chinese soil.

“The AIT would also be regarded as a primary stronghold for the US invasion of China.

“Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen’s administration would be defined as a traitorous group.

“That being said, from a strategic perspective, the AIT would become the most insecure place in Taiwan and a blasting fuse for clashes.”

The AIT performs the functions of a US embassy, but it is not technically one.
[FULL  STORY]

Reuters
Date: July 31, 2018

BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) – China urged the United States on Tuesday not to allow Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to transit its territory when she visits Belize and Paraguay next month, adding to tension between Beijing and Washington that has worsened amid a trade war.

Beijing considers democratic Taiwan to be a wayward province of “one China”, ineligible for state-to-state relations, and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

China regularly calls Taiwan the most sensitive and important issue between it and the United States, and Beijing always complains to Washington about transit stops by Taiwanese presidents.

Taiwan’s government announced on Monday that Tsai would travel to and from its two diplomatic allies via the United States, standard procedure for visits by Taiwanese presidents to Latin America.