Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/11/23
By: Wang Shu-fen and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Nov. 23 (CNA) The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) on Wednesday issued an order preventing all aircraft leased or owned by TransAsia Airways from leaving Taiwan, in an effort to ensure the financially-troubled company does not move its assets beyond the jurisdiction of the Taiwan authorities.

TransAsia has been ordered to draft a plan detailing how it will dispose of the 27 registered aircraft in its fleet, after the carrier suspended all flights without any warning on Tuesday and later the same day announced the company’s intention to withdraw from the airline market, the CAA said on Wednesday.

Of the airline’s fleet, which is made up of A321, A320, A330 and ATR aircraft, 16 are leased while the rest are owned by the company.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 24, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee (李大維) yesterday downplayed the potential impact of a US

withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), saying the government has prepared for such an eventuality.

Lee made the remarks on the sidelines of a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, which was convened to review the ministry’s budget for next fiscal year.

“This is what we expected. [US president-elect Donald Trump] clearly indicated in his campaign remarks that he intended to head in that direction,” Lee said in response to media inquiries regarding Trump’s plan to issue a note of intent to withdraw from the US-led TPP “from day one” of his presidency.

The planned withdrawal from the TPP is one of the many policy plans outlined by Trump in a video posted on YouTube on Monday.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: November 24, 2016
By: Stephanie Chao

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Premier Lin Chuan on Wednesday said the government would likely hold the Civil

Aeronautics Administration (CAA, 民航局) accountable for negligence ahead of TransAsia’s (復興航空) shock announcement that it was closing due to financial difficulties.

The statement came a day after the Executive Yuan declared its support for the CAA’s administration, saying the aviation body had done nothing wrong.

Negligence

Lin was asked to comment about TransAsia’s closure while he was visiting the Taiwan International Machine Tool Show Wednesday morning.

He said the CAA, Taiwan’s aviation authority, needed to reflect on its own handling of TransAsia.

The Executive Yuan did not receive information from the CAA regarding TransAsia’s plan to suspend flights on Tuesday, Lin said.    [FULL  STORY]

Children of same-sex couples in Taiwan only have one legal parent.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/11/22
By: ZiQing Low

When Chieh Li (潔麗, an alias) was recovering from her cesarean section, her partner Rabbit (an alias)

was unable to enter the intensive care unit where their newborn twins were being monitored because she was not legally recognized as their guardian.

This is just one barrier faced by the nearly 100 same-sex couples who have children in Taiwan, the Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy said at a press conference yesterday.

Chieh Li and her partner, along with six other same-sex couples, plan to file a lawsuit in December to claim joint custody over their children.

Under the current Civil Code, only the birth mother is the legal parent of children born to same-sex couples, and adopted children can only be registered under one parent.    [FULL  STORY]

Leftist intellectual spent time at Green Island prison

Taiwan News
Date: 2016/11/22
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Leftist intellectual and former political prisoner Chen Yingzhen died in Beijing

Tuesday at the age of 79, reports said.

Chen was born in Hsinchu in 1937 and was noted as the founder of a magazine titled “Ren Jian” or “Among the People.”

Launched in 1985, the publication paid attention to political oppression under the Kuomintang’s Martial Law and painted a sympathetic picture of the working class during the island’s industrialization.

From 1968, Chen had already served seven years in prison on Green Island off Taitung County on suspicion of communist sympathies. He wrote a series of novels, including “My Brother Kang-hsiung” and “The Noodle Stand,” centering on laborers, farmers and common people exploited by the authorities and by capitalism. Thanks to protest by prominent activists and writers, a second detention in 1979 only lasted a few hours.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/11/22
By: Yu Hsiao-han and Christie Chen

Taipei, Nov. 22 (CNA) Members of the Green Consumers’ Foundation, a Taiwanese environmental

group, visited Japan’s Chiba Prefecture on Tuesday to test radiation levels in the soil, as the debate over whether to lift the ban on food imports from radiation-affected areas of the country has become a hot-button issue in Taiwan.

The tests conducted by the group, broadcast in a series of live Facebook broadcasts, were carried out in a rice paddy in Imba-numa. About 1 kilogram of soil was collected from the paddy field and tested for radiation.

In the broadcasts, Jay Fang (方儉), chairman of the foundation, said all three of the tests showed that the soil contained the radioactive element Caesium-137, which has a half-life of about 30 years.

One of the tests showed the soil sample containing up to 19.256 becquerel per kilogram (bq/kg) of Caesium-137, with a margin of error of plus or minus 8-10 percentage points, Fang said.    [FULL  STORY]

‘ECONOMICALLY VICTIMIZED’:One KMT official said the president has hung the private sector out to dry by not recognizing the effects of a decline in Chinese tourists

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 23, 2016
By: Lu Yi-hsuan and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday blamed the government for TransAsia Airways’ demise,

saying President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) cross-strait policy and a decline in the number of Chinese tourists were responsible for the airline’s dissolution.

Although TransAsia “admittedly has internal problems,” the losses incurred by the declining number of Chinese tourists that occurred under the Tsai administration made TransAsia vulnerable, as cross-strait travel comprised 40 percent of the airline’s operations, KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Tang Te-ming (唐德明) said at a news conference.

TransAsia, an ailing company founded in 1951, is estimated to have paid nearly NT$1.2 billion (US$37.6 million) in compensation to victims and their families of two deadly crashes in July 2014 and February last year.

“The Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] government’s policies have led to a cooling of cross-strait relations, which affected cross-strait flights. Those issues were probably the last straw for TransAsia,” Tang said, citing a recent poll that showed Tsai’s disapproval rating has climbed to nearly 60 percent and identified her cross-strait policy as causing the “suffering of the public.”    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: November 23, 2016
By: CNA

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Travel agencies were busy counting their losses on Tuesday following an unexpected

announcement by TransAsia Airways (復興航空) that it was withdrawing from the aviation market.

TransAsia announced on Tuesday that all of the airline’s flights would be terminated effective immediately, after an extraordinary board meeting passed a resolution to dissolve the company. In addition to domestic routes, TransAsia also flies to Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand and Cambodia.

The company estimated that 100,000 passengers would be affected. Liao Chao-yang, vice president of Star Travel, said although TransAsia is not a major airline, the unexpected nature of the decision would have a major impact on the travel industry and caught travel agencies by surprise.

With Star Travel alone. 2100 people are booked on TransAsia flights or package tours using TransAsia flights scheduled to depart before Chinese New Year, with sales totaling NT$30 million, Star Travel said.    [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2016/11/21
By: Olivia Yang

Lee says at least being ‘stateless’ means Iceland authorities agree with her that ‘Taiwan is not part of China.’

The nationality of a Taiwanese citizen has been classified as “stateless” on her residence permit in Iceland, and a photo of the permit has sparked discussion in Taiwan and China.

Lee Wan-chien (李宛蒨), 23, is currently in Iceland on a six-month student exchange program and has been applying for a residence permit with a “Taiwanese” nationality for three months. Lee has shared her application experience through three Facebook posts this month, with the most recent, on Nov. 18. showing a photo of the latest permit she received having her nationality as “Stateless.”

Lee says in her first post on Nov. 1 that she emailed The Directorate of Immigration in Iceland three times explaining why she hoped her nationality on her ID card could be changed to “Taiwanese” instead of “Chinese.” However, all three emails did not receive a reply, and Lee went directly to the immigration office where an official said the nationality could not be changed because Taiwan is not recognized as a country.    [FULL  STORY]