Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/06/30
By: Sophia Yeh, Hsieh Chia-chen and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, June 30 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Friday hailed the completion of pension

reforms involving civil servants, public school teachers and political appointees, saying the achievement proved that such reforms are not a “minefield” for the government or “a taboo that cannot be touched.”

Tsai lauded passage of the deep cuts in retirement benefits during a speech at the Presidential Office after an amendment to the Act Governing the Recompense for the Discharge of Special Political Appointees cleared the Legislature earlier Friday.

The legislation, along with two other bills covering the retirement benefits, pensions and severance of civil servants and public school teachers in the past three days, represented major steps forward in making the pension systems for the two groups of public employees more sustainable.

“Finally, pension bankruptcy is no longer an urgent crisis to Taiwan,” Tsai said in the speech, even if the one pension system that was truly on the verge of bankruptcy, that of the military, was not addressed by the government in this week’s legislation.    [FULL  STORY]

DISSATISFIED YOUTH:Tsai received a 57 percent dissatisfaction rate among 20-to-29-year-olds, who likely believe she has not gone far enough, a commentator said

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 01, 2017
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

More than half of Taiwanese view the “one country, two systems” framework as a failure and support

the nation “going its own way” as Hong Kong marks the 20th anniversary of its handover to China, a survey published yesterday by the Taiwan Thinktank showed.

More than 52 percent of respondents said that the “one country, two systems” model applied in Hong Kong has proved a failure, with only 22 percent viewing it as a success.

More than 63 percent were pessimistic about Hong Kong’s democracy, with only 22 percent expressing optimism.

Proposed by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) in the 1980s, the formula of extensive local autonomy beneath overarching Chinese sovereignty was initially directed at Taiwan before being applied to Hong Kong in 1997, but has failed to win local support.
{FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: June 30, 2017
By: The China Post with CNA

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The U.S. government has approved a US$1.42 billion arms sale to Taiwan — the first of the Trump administration.

The deal, which will take effect within a month, covers eight items Taiwan asked for last year, which are expected to enhance the country’s air and navy defense system, as well as early warning capabilities, according to the Ministry of National Defense.

The items include MK48 heavyweight torpedoes, high-speed anti-radiation missiles, AN/SLQ-32(V) electronic warfare shipboard suite upgrades and SM-2 missile components.

The MND said it will discuss with the U.S. the exact number of weapons, their price and a delivery schedule.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-06-28

The US State Department has ranked Taiwan as a tier one country in its 2017 report on human

trafficking. This is the eighth year in a row that Taiwan has been ranked among the top countries in the world for its efforts to fight human trafficking.

Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency said that the report, out on Tuesday, is an acknowledgement of the country’s efforts in combating human trafficking. The agency said the efforts are most notable in the prevention of human-trafficking activities, prosecuting suspects, protecting victims, and partnering up with other nations.

The US report has also listed a few areas in which Taiwan can improve. These include, among other things, increasing prosecutors’ and judges’ understanding of human trafficking, and revising laws to ensure labor rights for domestic workers. The immigration agency says those issues will be addressed in the near future.    [FULL  STORY]

UK Supreme Court returns case to Scotland

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/06/28
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court agreed with Taiwan to return the

extradition request for Scotsman Zain Dean (林克穎), who fled the island after being convicted of killing a man in a hit-and-run, to Scotland’s court system for reconsideration, reports said Wednesday.

Dean was sentenced in July 2012 by the Taiwan High Court to four years in prison, but before he was locked up, he escaped the country using the passport of a friend. Great Britain detained him in October 2013, but since then, the effort by Taiwan to have him extradited to serve the rest of his sentence has faced numerous ups and downs.

After Scotland’s High Court agreed with Dean he should not be extradited, Taiwan took the case to the U.K. Supreme Court, which ruled in its favor. The latest verdict was likely to have an influence on the next ruling by Scotland’s judiciary, reports said.

Taiwanese police said Dean was driving under the influence of alcohol when he hit a newspaper deliveryman on a motorcycle in Taipei in March 2010. The victim was his family’s sole wage earner. Dean claimed that somebody else had been driving his car after he left a nightclub.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/06/28
By: Scarlett Chai and S.C. Chang

Taipei, June 28 (CNA) The Executive Yuan’s Department of Cyber Security said Wednesday that it has

not received any reports of government computers being attacked by Petrwrap ransomware that has ravaged mostly government and state enterprise computers in Europe and beyond since Tuesday.

The latest ransomware, initially dubbed Petya, sends social engineering mails to targets. Once the attached file is opened, the virus will immediately spread throughout the computer and encrypt files. The virus will also spread to networked computers.

Petrwrap has reportedly attacked corporate computers in Ukraine, Russia, Denmark, Spain, France, the United Kingdom and India.

“What makes the rapid escalation of Petya both surprising and alarming is its similarity to the recent worldwide WannaCry ransomware crisis, primarily in its use of NSA exploit EternalBlue to spread through networks,” according to a WIRED magazine report.    [FULL  STORY]

UPHOLDING RIGHTS:Allison Lee has worked to help foreign fishermen working on Taiwanese boats for five years. She said the big problem is enforcing labor laws

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 29, 2017
By: Staff writer, with CNA, WASHINGTON

Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union secretary-general Allison Lee (李麗華) on Tuesday was recognized at a

US Department of State ceremony in Washington for upholding the rights of foreign fishermen.

She was one of eight people awarded the department’s Hero Acting to End Modern Slavery Award, and is the first Taiwanese to receive the honor.

Lee was honored “in recognition of her unwavering advocacy on behalf of foreign fishermen on Taiwan-flagged vessels, her central role in forming the first labor union composed of and led by foreign workers, and her courage in demanding stronger protections for vulnerable workers through sustained engagement with authorities and the public,” the department said.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Ivanka Trump, US President Donald Trump’s daughter, presented Lee with the award and asked her about her work.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: June 28, 2017
By: The China Post

Chang Gung Memorial Hospital confirmed Wednesday that 22 physicians at its Linkou branch had

tendered their resignations.

At a briefing earlier in the day, Vice Superintendent Wen Ming-shien (溫明賢) said the resignations “absolutely would not” affect the quality of the hospital’s emergency care.

By law, the emergency clinic at Linkou must have 41 physicians and it still has 58, he said.

Wen said that hospital administrators were working to keep the emergency room staff on board.

Unrest, Solidarity and Peer Pressure

The 22 attending physicians tendered their resignations mainly because two department heads were removed from their posts after violating hospital regulations, Wen said.

The abrupt change triggered feelings of unrest among the emergency clinic staff. That — along with feelings of solidarity and peer pressure — had catalyzed the wave of resignations, he said.
[FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-06-27

The Presidential Office has expressed concern for Liu Xiaobo after the Chinese dissident and Nobel

prizewinner was diagnosed with terminal cancer. A statement from the Chinese government said Liu has been granted medical parole and was being treated at a hospital.

Liu was jailed for 11 years in 2009 on subversion charges for drafting the document Charter 08, which called for an end to single-party rule in China. He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2010 for his nonviolent struggle for human rights in China.

Presidential Office spokesperson Alex Huang said Tuesday that the office hopes Liu will be granted basic human rights.

“Regarding Nobel peace laureate Mr Liu Xiaobo, who has been diagnosed with cancer, we are very concerned about his health and hope for Mr Liu to be granted proper medical treatment and for a speedy recovery,” said Huang. “At the same time, we call on the Beijing government to be open-minded in its treatment of an individual who has peacefully sought political reforms and democratic development, and that his basic human rights be protected.”    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/06/27
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPI (Taiwan News)–A Taiwanese nurse group on Tuesday protested against a Golden Melody Awards & Festival performance featuring dancers wearing short and high cut nurse dresses and nurse hats, calling the performance degrading to the nursing profession and asking responsible bodies to apologize.

Taiwan Union of Nurses Association (TUNA) said in a statement on Tuesday that dancers were wearing short and high-cut nurse dresses while performing a sensational dance to the tune of Hakka singer Wing Lo’s (羅文裕) singing during the 2017 Golden Melody Awards & Festival halftime show on Saturday. The statement said the performance was inappropriate and had seriously degraded the image and professionalism of nurses. The association also criticized Taiwan’s top music awards ceremony for being acted out like a striptease show.

TUNA Secretary General Tseng Hsiu-Yi (曾修儀) said that nurses are indispensable professionals in the medical care system and their costumes and hats are sacred professional symbols. However, entertainers were sometimes seen wearing nurse outfits while performing shows that distorted nursing professionalism, enraging nearly 160,000 nurses in the country, Tseng said.    [FULL  STORY]