Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/04/12
By: By Yin Chun-chieh and Kuan-lin Liu

New York, April 11 (CNA) Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) won the

2018 Edison Awards silver medal in the commercial safety category on Wednesday for its Fluid-Driven Emergency Rescuer (FDER), which helps firefighters more effectively and safely fight fires.

The technology, shaped like a small box and containing a micro-turbine generator, is mounted on the firehose nozzle and can generate thermal imaging, light and signals to evacuation routes through hydropower, according to descriptions on the ITRI and the Edison Awards’ websites.

Evin Liao (廖榮皇), the inventor of the technology who accepted the award on behalf of the ITRI team, said he is honored to be able to take a Taiwan-made innovation to the global stage.    [FULL  STORY]

LINCHPIN: President Tsai Ing-wen was quoted as saying that the former premier’s political credentials and connections to the city make him the party’s best candidate

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 13, 2018
By: Su Fang-ho and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday agreed to represent the Democratic

Progressive Party (DPP) in the New Taipei City mayoral election, although the paperwork formalizing his candidacy would not be completed until the end of this month.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is also DPP chairperson, yesterday met with Su after the party’s Central Executive Committee and its Electoral Strategy Committee on Wednesday recommended that Su be drafted as the party’s candidate for New Taipei City mayor, DPP spokesman Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said.

The mayoral election is a linchpin of the party’s electoral strategy for the November nine-in-one elections that would be an overall morale booster if successful, Cheng quoted Tsai as saying at the meeting.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-04-11

The foreign minister, Joseph Wu, says Taiwan will make its voice heard regardless of

whether it is invited to this year’s World Health Assembly (WHA).

The WHA is the convening body of the World Health Organization (WHO). Taiwan attended the annual assembly as an observer from 2009 to 2016. However, it was not invited last year due to pressure from Beijing.

On Wednesday, Wu delivered a report to the Legislature’s foreign affairs committee on efforts to secure an invitation to this year’s WHA. He said Taiwan should not be optimistic about its chances of attending this year.
[FULL  STORY]

US influence pervades the modern Taiwanese diet.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/04/11
By: Steven Crook and Katy Hui-wen Hung

A culinary gulf separates the typical Taiwanese and the average American, yet the United States has had an underappreciated impact on the Taiwanese diet. The influence is profound, and goes beyond the ways in which the U.S., the world’s topmost food exporter, has changed eating patterns on every continent.

Much of the economic assistance Taiwan received from the U.S. in the 1950s and ‘60s came in the form of food or technology that helped Taiwan boost local food production. In 1954, the U.S. government began buying surplus crops from American farmers and making them available to Taiwan and other allies at artificially low prices. The same year, the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction introduced the Irwin mango. Now known to every Taiwanese as the aiwen (愛文芒果), this cultivar has largely replaced the smaller, greener so-called “native mango.”

After 1959, the U.S. funded the introduction of Yorkshire, Landrace and Duroc boars to improve local swine. Because the latter two breeds are accustomed to eating corn, not the sweet potatoes leaf and sundry leftovers traditionally used to fatten pigs in Taiwan, the promotion of hybrids led to a dependence on U.S. feed grains.   [FULL  STORY]

Facebook Live counterfeit operation busted, over NT$40 million goods discovered

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/04/11
By: Renée Salmonsen, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — After three months of surveillance, police uncovered 7,392

counterfeit items worth over NT$40 million (US$1.3 million) waiting to be sold over Facebook Live in Kaohsiung and Tainan.

Chief of the investigation, Tai Chao-tung (戴朝東), said today that the culprits knew hawking counterfeit goods over Facebook Live would be difficult for police to track and that this method of thievery has been gaining popularity, according to CNA. man surnamed Wu (吳), created six Facebook fan pages for their goods and then broadcast the sales late at night.

The fake items sold included Louis Vuitton and Gucci brand earrings, rings, bracelets, necklaces, and phone cases. Counterfeit authentication certificates were included with each purchase, violating trademark laws.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/04/11
By: Huang Li-yun and William Yen

Taipei, April 11 (CNA) A wanted Taiwanese man convicted on several counts of sexual

assault was recently apprehended in Cambodia and sent back to Taiwan on Tuesday, in a joint operation between law enforcement in the two countries, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said Wednesday.

The man had been on the run for almost 12 years after he was convicted in 2006 on charges of sexually assaulting of four women on different occasions in 2003, said Su Li-tsung (蘇立琮), an officer in the CIB International Criminal Affairs Division.

Taiwan courts sentenced him to a total of 20 years in prison but he fled to Macau on Sept. 26, 2006 and later escaped to Cambodia, police investigators said.    [FULL  STORY]

SILENT: Kuan Chung-ming has yet to provide an explanation for the allegations, necessitating the government to establish a task force, the education minister said

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 12, 2018
By: Ann Maxon  /  Staff reporter

Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) yesterday called on National Taiwan

University (NTU) president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) to respond to allegations that he had illegally worked in China, saying that Kuan’s appointment would not be approved if a government task force found the allegation to be true.

Kuan was elected the university’s president on Jan. 5 and has since been accused of conflict of interest, plagiarism and having illegally taught in China.

He was originally scheduled to take office on Feb. 1.

The Ministry of Education will not approve Kuan’s appointment if he were found to have illegally worked in China, Pan told a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee.

According to the Act of Governing the Appointment of Educators (教育人員任用條例), public university professors cannot hold part-time positions at institutions in China, he said.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-04-10

Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu is having a busy week, with reports saying she is preparing to

take over as secretary-general of the Presidential Office. Chen is also helping to lay down her Democratic Progressive Party’s battle lines ahead of local elections later in the year. On Monday, Chen visited New Taipei, where this year’s mayoral contest is beginning to take shape.

Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu was in New Taipei on Monday on business from her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). New Taipei is Taiwan’s most populous municipality, and the city’s upcoming mayoral contest is seen as a key test for the DPP and for the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen.     [FULL  STORY]

Michael Turton argues that international media’s crass exploitation of cross-Strait tensions plays right into Beijing’s hands.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/04/10
By: Michael Turton

Knowing that sex sells, the international media routinely sexes up stories about Taiwan by exploiting the idea of (constantly rising) tensions to drive clicks.

Central to this apparatus is the ideological construct that China-Taiwan relations are a site of tensions driven by Taiwan’s actions, to which China reacts without any agency of its own, as if its reactions are involuntary reflexes rather than policy choices. For example, earlier this month Associated Press (AP) ran a story on phone scammers from Taiwan leagued with Chinese criminal gangs, who operate in many countries, and their efforts to con Chinese citizens.   [FULL  STORY]

Corrective measures have been implemented among banks at the request of the FSC to avoid such cases of loan fraud in the future

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/04/10
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Fifty-four managers of seven state banks involved in the Ching-

Fu syndicated loan fraud scandal have been punished, according to the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Tuesday.

Seven other banks involved in the major defense scandal have yet to take punitive measures against the managers at stake.

In August 2017, an anonymous whistle-blower alerted the navy that Ching Fu Shipbuilding Co. (慶富造船) was falsifying its progress reports for a NT$35.8 billion (US$1.18 billion) project, contracted from the Ministry of National Defense, to construct six minesweeper ships. The company defaulted on a NT$20.5 billion (US$679 million) syndicated loan from state banks and incurred NT$14.897 billion in losses.

Banks that took part in the Ching Fu syndicated loan include the First Bank, Land Bank of Taiwan, Bank of Kaohsiung, Bank of Taiwan, Taiwan Business Bank, Taiwan Cooperative Bank, Hua Nan Bank, Mega International Commercial Bank, Chang Hwa Bank, the Export-Import Bank of ROC, Shin Kong Bank, Yuanta Commercial Bank, Taichung Commercial Bank, and Ta Chong Bank, which has been merged into the Yuanta Commercial Bank since January 1, 2018.    [FULL  STORY]