Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/04/23
By: Tien Yu-pin and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, April 23 (CNA) Damage to the Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2) undersea

cables is slowing internet access to websites around the world for users in Taiwan, and the disruption could last for up to a month, Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd. said on Sunday.

In a statement posted on its website, the company said access to websites in Europe, the United States and Japan is being disrupted and it will take up to one month before repairs to the cable can be completed.

APCN 2, a submarine telecommunications cable linking nine countries in the Asia-Pacific region — including Taiwan — to the rest of the world online suffered a cable fault at 7:08 a.m. on Saturday that was probably caused by fishing operations or erosion, the statement said.    [FULL  STORY]

HEAD FOR A HEAD:DPP Lawmaker Pasuya Yao, who wants coins with Chiang Kai-shek’s portrait phased out, said Tsai Ing-wen would be blamed if the hall is not closed down

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 24, 2017
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

Following the decapitation of statues of former President Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and

Japanese engineer Yoichi Hatta, a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker yesterday said he has drafted a bill that would repurpose the Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) Memorial Hall and relocate all the nation’s Chiang statues.

DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智) said that he would today begin seeking endorsements from other lawmakers for the bill, which would see the abolishment of the Organization Act of National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Management Office (國立中正紀念堂管理處組織法).

The proposal seeks to shutter the memorial hall to remove all symbols associated with Chiang and then refurbish it for other purposes, and the relocation of all Chiang statues nationwide to Chiang’s mausoleum in Taoyuan’s Dasi District (大溪).  [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2017/04/21
By: TNL Staff

Check out the latest episode of The News Lens Radio.

I’m going down with the ship, we all are, so we might as well get involved. I am not going to sit around and watch this earth go up in flames.

In this episode of The News Lens Radio, we are joined by two environmentalists waging a war on plastic and marine pollution in Taiwan.

Many visitors to Taiwan are pleasantly surprised by the clean streets and beautiful vistas around the island. For those who go to coastal areas, however, the picture is not always so rosy. Like many countries with an extensive coastline, marine pollution, which is mostly plastic, is pushing the ecosystem to a crisis point.

Where does this trash come from? Is there anything that can be done about it? Or is this problem too far gone?    [FULL  STORY]

Trawler was carrying 21 tourists from Huayu to main island

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/04/22
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Two tourists traveling on a fishing trawler in Penghu (澎湖) fell

overboard and drowned, reports said Saturday.

Some commentators blamed the accident on a decision by the Penghu County Government to relax restrictions on the ferrying of passengers between the archipelago’s islands by fishing boats in order to relief transportation problems.

The fishing trawler “Lien Te Li No.2” (聯得利二號) reportedly left the remote western island of Huayu (花嶼) for Penghu’s main town of Magong (馬公) around 5:30 Saturday morning with 21 passengers on board.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/04/22
By: Tony Liao and Elaine Hou

Washington, April 21 (CNA) U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear that his

administration will not alter the United States’ policy on Taiwan and will honor the commitments made in the Taiwan Relations Act, a senior State Department official said recently.

“I think now the situation has sort of been established that the U.S. policy is not gonna change,” said Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs at the U.S. State Department, in an interview with news website SupChina last week.

She was responding to questions on the development of cross-strait ties under Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
[FULL  STORY]

DIOXIN DOUBTS:Vendors were told to recall eggs from three farms by 3pm yesterday and inspectors would ensure that consumers could no longer buy them, a minister said

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 23, 2017
By: Lee I-chia / Staff reporter

Almost 7 tonnes of eggs that could contain high levels of dioxin residues have been

removed from retailers’ shelves, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said yesterday.

At a news conference on Friday the Food and Drug Administration announced that laboratory tests had revealed that eggs sold by distributor Hocheng Retails (合成批發行) in Miaoli County’s Toufen Township (頭份) had dioxin residues exceeding the national standard.

The ministry, the Council of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Administration on Thursday traced the source of the eggs to three producers in Changhua County — Chunyi (駿逸), Hungchang (鴻彰) and Tsaiyuan (財源) farms.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: April 23, 2017
By: The China Post news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Nearly 70 percent of foreigners who became naturalized R.O.C. citizens in 2016 were from Vietnam, according to government statistics released Saturday.

Over 3,000 people were naturalized as R.O.C. citizens in 2016, the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) disclosed Saturday.

Most were women: 93.8 percent of the newly naturalized citizens last year were female and 90.74 percent had obtained citizenship through marriage.    [FULL  STORY]

‘The history is indeed horrific; estimates vary, but the most commonly cited figure places the total number of comfort women at 200,000.’

The News Lens
Date: 2017/04/21
By: Keith Menconi

When one women’s rights advocacy group sought to commemorate the estimated 2,000

Taiwanese women forced into sexual servitude by Japanese forces during World War II, they chose to do so with a museum that celebrates the lives of the survivors.

In December 2016, the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation (TWRF) opened the Ama Museum in Taipei’s Datong district to house hundreds of collected artifacts related to the comfort women system and the survivors themselves, and also to serve as a focal point for women’s advocacy in Taipei.

Those memorialized in this museum, referred to euphemistically as “comfort women,” were coerced into brothels throughout Asia to serve the Japanese military.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/04/21
By: Wang Shu-fen and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, April 21 (CNA) Every pilot working for Taiwanese airlines will have to take an

alcohol test before flying starting early June, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said on Friday.

The new regulation affects over 2,800 pilots, including those in Taiwan’s general civil aviation transportation sector, as well as those working in common aviation industries and at local flying schools, the agency said.

Currently, Taiwan’s aviation companies perform alcohol tests only on about 30 percent of their pilots, according to the CAA.    [FULL  STORY]