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Speeding blamed for Taiwan tour bus crash which killed 33

Bus was going 79 kph where limit was 40 kph: prosecutors

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/10
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Speeding was the main cause of the tour bus accident that

Speeding was main factor in deadly Feb.13 bus crash.(By Central News Agency)

killed 33 people, including the driver, on a freeway in Taipei on February 13, prosecutors said Friday.

The bus was returning from a long one-day trip to the cherry blossoms at Wuling Farm in Taichung City when it flipped over the barrier on an exit ramp linking two freeways in Taipei City. A total of 33 people died, with 11 surviving the ordeal.

The driver, Kang Yu-hsun, had been driving at a speed of first 98 kilometers per hour and then 79 kph when the accident happened, on a stretch where the maximum legal speed was clearly advertised as 40 kph, the Shilin District Prosecutors Office announced in a report Friday.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan’s halal-certified restaurants break 100-mark

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/10
By: Wang Shu-fen and Lilian Wu

Taipei, March 10 (CNA) The number of restaurants in Taiwan that have been given halal certification — which identifies them as serving food in compliance with Islamic dietary law — has broken the 100-mark, the head of the Tourism Bureau said Friday.

“We hope to see the number reach 200,” Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said, pointing out that Taiwan is making efforts to move toward a more friendly environment toward Muslims in a bid to attract Muslim visitors.

Chou made the remarks at a ceremony to grant halal certification to 28 restaurants, including 16 in hotels, which were issued by the Tourism Bureau, in collaboration with the Taipei-based Chinese Muslim Association.

This brings to 104 the number of restaurants throughout the country that are now certified as halal, which, among other things, means that they do not serve certain foods such as pork or alcohol, which are not permissible under Islamic law, according to the association.    [FULL  STORY]

Ex-student held for espionage

STIRRING UP TROUBLE:China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau’s accusation that it ordered Zhou to spy was ‘pure fabrication’

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 11, 2017
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Former Chinese student Zhou Hongxu (周泓旭) was detained incommunicado on

Former Chinese student Zhou Hongxu takes a selfie in an undated picture posted on Facebook. Screengrab from Facebook

suspicion of recruiting people for a spy ring while enrolled at a Taipei university and trying to coerce government officials into passing on classified materials.

The Taipei District Court yesterday cited the risk of 29-year-old Zhou fleeing the nation and an ongoing investigation.

Prosecutors and officers of the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau National Security Section on Thursday raided Zhou’s rented apartment in Taipei, confiscating his computer and mobile phone.

Zhou was taken into custody for questioning by prosecutors, who said there was sufficient evidence to charge him with violating the National Security Act (國家安全法)    [FULL  STORY]

Four killed in Taoyuan nursing home inferno

The China Post
Date: March 11, 2017
By: The China Post news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Four elderly residents were killed and 13 others injured in a predawn

Firefighters check a nursing home in Taoyuan after putting out a fire there Friday, March 10. The fire killed four of the nursing home’s residents. (CNA)

fire that gutted an illegal floor of their nursing home in Taoyuan, Friday, the city fire department said.

The fire broke out on the second floor of the nursing home on Longyuan Road in the city’s Longtan District at around 5 a.m., the fire department said.

Seventeen people, including a caregiver, were rescued from the second floor after some 100

firefighters and other first responders rushed to battle the blaze, the department said, adding the fire was put out in 30 minutes.

Four of the elderly residents rescued from the nursing home were pronounced dead on arrival at hospital, while the other 13 were being treated for smoke inhalation and various degrees of burns, said Hu Ying-ta    [FULL  STORY]

Foreigners and Taiwanese Unite for Women’s Rights

‘I think what makes this event special is that we’re actually uniting Taiwanese people and foreigners.’

The News Lens
Date: 2017/03/09
By: Keith Menconi

Local activists, legislators and U.S. expats marked International Women’s Day on

Credit: Iping Liang‎ via Facebook

Wednesday by taking to the streets in Taipei in support of women’s rights in an event dubbed the “Women’s March Taiwan” that highlighted the challenges faced by women in Taiwan and around the world.

Nearly 100 marchers holding red balloons and donning the iconic knit “pussyhats” marched from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to Daan Forest Park in the late afternoon.

Organizers say the march was aimed at raising awareness of a broad set of issues including violence against women, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA rights, immigrant rights, and environmental conservation.    [FULL  STORY]

Editorial: Can there be a THAAD for Taiwan?

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/09
By: Taiwan News, Staff Writer

THAAD. The abbreviation of the little-known term “Terminal High Altitude Area Defense”

Photo by US Army.

forced the closure of supermarkets in China. For once, it is not anger at a perceived Taiwan Independence statement by a Taiwanese entertainer or at a politician’s refusal to mention the “1992 Consensus” which is ruffling Beijing’s feathers.

The unexpected culprit is South Korea, which decided to deploy the American-made system in a response to the numerous missile launches, nuclear tests and other provocations by its communist-ruled neighbor, North Korea.

Despite repeated assertions by both Seoul and Washington that all the system is designed to do, is to take down missiles emanating from the cantankerous north, it is China that has reacted with the most fury.    [FULL  STORY]

Security bureau keeping track of 8 Taiwanese suspected of links to IS

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/09
By: Lu Hsin-hui and Elaine Hou

Taipei, March 9 (CNA) Eight Taiwanese are being monitored on suspicion of affiliation to

NSB Director-General Peng Sheng-chu (彭勝竹, right)

the militant group Islamic State (IS), the National Security Bureau (NSB) said Thursday.

In a legislative hearing, Huang Yu-shun (黃裕順), a section chief in the bureau, said the eight people were mentally unstable and the bureau was keeping close track of them.

In a previous report to the legislative Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, the bureau had said eight Taiwanese had been identified as possible IS sympathizers.

During Thursday’s session, Huang was asked by Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) for an update on the situation.    [FULL  STORY]

Fake drugs have Chinese ingredients

INVESTIGATION:Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said authorities are trying to identify those involved in the production and distribution of the counterfeits

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 10, 2017
By: Wu Liang-yi, Lee Hsin-fang and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporters, with staff writer

Counterfeit batches of Crestor brand lipid-lowering drugs contained ingredients from

Two pharmacists, left and center, and an employee of Zuellig Pharma Taiwan yesterday display a new batch of lipid-lowering drug Crestor with the word “exchange” printed on the packages and certification proving them to be real at a pharmacy in Taipei, after two batches of the drug were found to have been counterfeit last week. Photo: CNA

Chinese pharmaceutical producers, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said yesterday after being subjected to a barrage of questions from a lawmaker.

A recall was issued on Tuesday for all of AstraZeneca’s Crestor tablets following a discovery last week that two batches of the drug prescribed to 570,000 National Health Insurance patients were counterfeits made from atorvastatin, a cheaper drug whose patent had expired.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare did not release any information regarding the quantity, distribution or origin of the fake drugs until yesterday, when Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國) grilled Chen on the issue during a legislative session.

Following Liu’s questions, Chen said that the fake drugs’ ingredients were mailed from China to Taiwan, but the identity of many individuals involved in their production and distribution remained unknown to authorities.    [FULL  STORY]

Ex-President Ma denies causing KMT 2014, 2016 election defeats

The China Post
Date: March 10, 2017
By: Eric Huang, Special to The China Post TWN

WASHINGTON, D.C — Former President Ma Ying-Jeou has rejected the idea that the

presidential candidate from the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), bows with party workers as they concede defeat in presidential polls outside the party headquarters in Taipei on January 16, 2016. (AFP)

Kuomintang’s (KMT) close relations with China under his leadership had been a reason for his party’s defeats in the 2014 local and 2016 presidential elections.

Ma, who is on a 12-day U.S. tour, was speaking Tuesday at an event at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

While he had said on other occasions during the U.S. tour that he accepted responsibility for the defeats, the former president cited a food safety scandal in 2014 and the KMT’s replacement of its presidential candidate as the primary reasons for the two losses during a question-and-answer session at the institution.

Ma spoke about his legacy in international affairs, U.S.-Taiwan relations and cross-strait relations.    [FULL  STORY]

Ma misused ‘one China’ term during speech, DPP says

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 09, 2017
By: Staff writer, with CNA

The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) representative office in Washington on

Former president Ma Ying-jeou, center, gives a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Tuesday. Photo: CNA

Tuesday said that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) mixed up the US’ “one China” policy with Beijing’s “one China” principle in a speech at the Brookings Institution.

Ma misquoted US President Donald Trump’s telephone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Dec. 2 last year, saying Trump had suggested the “one China policy” was up for negotiation by using the term “one China principle,” the office said.

Trump did not mention the “one China principle,” the office said in a statement.

The “one China” principle was designed by Beijing as a strategy to deal with Taiwan and is based on the idea that the “government of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] is the sole legitimate government of China and there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China.”    [FULL  STORY]