Taiwan News
Date: 2016-07-26
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – After a day which saw lawmakers vote on guidelines for ill-gotten party

assets, the Legislative Yuan faced a non-stop voting marathon lasting more than 80 hours, this time on the budgets of state enterprises, reports said Tuesday.

The 113-member body spent most of Monday voting on a controversial project to review allegedly illegally acquired assets by the Kuomintang, with the opposition trying to block the passage of the bill by adding as many amendments as possible.

A similar tactic was being deployed Tuesday as 2,419 items were added to the budget review of the state corporations, not all of the proposals came from the KMT, reports said.

While a total of 1,668 were filed by the main opposition, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party also presented 818 motions. According to various calculations mentioned in the media, voting on all the proposals would take between 15 and 30 days even if the lawmakers worked 24 hours a day as four rounds of voting were possible for each item.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/07/26
By: Bien Chin-feng, Lu Kang-chun and Lilian Wu

Taipei, July 26 (CNA) Family members of 23 Chinese nationals who died in a tour bus fire on July 19

have reached agreement on compensation for the deaths from the insurance company covering the bus company, the Tourism Bureau said Tuesday.

Chang Hsi-tsung (張錫聰), deputy director general of the bureau, said family members of 23 of the 24 Chinese who died in the blaze have signed settlement papers.

They agreed to compensation of NT$6.64 million per victim, including NT$2 million per person in professional liability insurance, NT$2 million per person in compulsory tour bus insurance, and another NT$2 million in passenger liability insurance.

The other family said it has commissioned a lawyer to take care of the matter and will not sign the papers before it returns home.     [FULL  STORY]

11-HOUR REVIEW:Tsai Ing-wen was glad to hear that the act had been passed and commended the legislature for its hard work in preparing and passing the legislation

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 26, 2016
By: Jake Chung  /  Staff writer, with CNA

The legislature yesterday passed legislation governing ill-gotten political party assets, which states

that all properties obtained by political parties after 1945 — not including party membership fees and political donations — are to be considered illegal and must be returned to the state.

The Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例) was passed after an 11-hour review on the legislative floor in Taipei.

The act states that all assets of a political party are considered frozen the moment the act is promulgated, with violators facing a jail term of up to five years. Any attempt to avoid, deny or obstruct investigations into party assets could lead to a fine of between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000.

The legislature also voted to approve a key provision of the act that stipulates that assets obtained since Aug. 15, 1945, would be subject to the proposed law.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: July 26, 2016
By: Stephanie Chao

Fishermen from three vessels were allowed onto Taiping Island’s (太平島) pier late Monday night to

restock supplies and receive medical attention, but they were prevented from setting foot on the island.

The fishermen remained on the pier and did not enter military-controlled areas, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA, 海巡署) said.

The docking of the fishermen, who had originally intended to set foot on the island to advocate R.O.C. sovereignty and fishing rights, was dubbed a “symbolic visit” by media and lawmakers.

The CGA, referring to its actions as a “humanitarian mission,” provided the vessels with 21 containers of drinking water from Taiping’s No. 5 well in addition to a crate of canned beef and another of canned pork.

A fourth vessel, which was carrying four Hong Kong journalists, did not dock.

Two fishing boat skippers received medical attention from a doctor on the pier, one for a toothache and the other for a skin infection, around 11:50 p.m., according to the CGA. The doctor said Tuesday morning that the men were recovering well.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-07-25
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau said Monday an initial settlement offer will give a compensation of NT$6.64 million (about US$207,500) to the family of each victim who died in the tour bus blaze accident on National Highway 1 on July 19.

After negotiations between the families of the victims and the authorities, an initial consensus on compensation has been reached, the Tourism Bureau said.

The compensation will come from insurance claims totaling NT$6.64 million arising from the accident, the bureau said.

The amount includes the claims from the three different insurances—the travel agency liability insurance, the charter bus liability insurance, and the passenger liability insurance—with each accounting for NT$ 2 million, as well as NT$640,000 for each victim from another passenger related insurance, the Tourism Bureau said.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: July 25, 2016

The Ministry of Science and Technology is pressing forward with scientific studies on Taiping

Island in response to the award rendered July 12 by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the South China Sea Arbitration initiated by the Philippines.

“The ministry will continue scientific research in the South China Sea,” MOST Minister Yang Hung-duen said at an interview with the Central News Agency July 22 in Taipei. “We will also share the results of all such endeavors with neighboring countries.”

According to the minister, current MOST research on Taiping Island focuses on ecology, marine weather and meteorology. He said he hopes more scholars in social and natural sciences will take part in these activities in order to fully explore and document the history of the island, as well as its rich ecosystem.

In addition to an existing weather observation station, Yang said MOST will dispatch experts to Taiping Island to study the possibility of installing additional equipment and conducting atmospheric studies on a broader scale.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: 2016/07/25
By: Bien Chin-feng, Wang Hung-kuo, Sunrise Huang, Lu Kang-chun and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, July 25 (CNA) A number of Taiwanese and Chinese officials attended a public funeral service Monday afternoon for the 24 Chinese tourists and two Taiwanese who were killed in a bus fire on a Taiwan freeway last week.

Prior to the scheduled public funeral service, a religious ceremony was held in the morning for some of the victims. A planned Christian memorial service was canceled.

Also on Monday, the bodies of four Chinese victims were cremated, while another four were due to be cremated later in the day, as arranged by the families that rushed to Taiwan after the incident on July 19.

Several Chinese officials are also in Taiwan to help deal with the aftermath of the bus fire that has given rise to safety concerns on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.     [FULL  STORY]

11-HOUR REVIEW:Tsai Ing-wen was glad to hear that the act had been passed and commended the legislature for its hard work in preparing and passing the legislation

Taipei Times
Date:  Jul 26, 2016
By: Jake Chung  /  Staff writer, with CNA

The legislature yesterday passed legislation governing ill-gotten political party assets, which

states that all properties obtained by political parties after 1945 — not including party membership fees and political donations — are to be considered illegal and must be returned to the state.

The Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例) was passed after an 11-hour review on the legislative floor in Taipei.

The act states that all assets of a political party are considered frozen the moment the act is promulgated, with violators facing a jail term of up to five years. Any attempt to avoid, deny or obstruct investigations into party assets could lead to a fine of between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: July 26, 2016
By: Sun Hsin Hsuan

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Investigators said late Sunday that five

PET bottles filled with gasoline may have exacerbated a bus fire that claimed the lives of all 26 passengers on board last Tuesday.

They maintained that human error may have caused or worsened the inferno.

A bus with 24 mainland Chinese tourists, one Taiwanese tour guide and the driver crashed last week into the outer edge of a guardrail on national highway 2.

Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office on Sunday detected samples of flammable liquid on the bus and confirmed they found five partly destroyed plastic containers on board.

Two bottles were found near the driver’s seat and three on the lower deck of the luggage compartment. There were also traces of gasoline near the driver’s seat and front door.

Prosecutors said the containers had been used to hold gasoline.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: July 25, 2016
By: Christine Chou

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Significant progress has been made in the investigation into the fire that

killed 26 people on a tour bus last Tuesday, as investigators detected samples of ignitable substances — possibly gasoline — among fire debris Sunday.

The Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office said they could be almost certain that the rapid spreading of flames was linked to fire accelerants. But the origin of the fire is not yet known.

Prosecutors said that after sending fire scene debris samples for laboratory analysis, they were alerted to traces of accelerants or fuels in a damaged container near the driver’s seat, in burnt residue in the driver’s cockpit, on the carpet at the front exit, and in three plastic containers in the luggage compartment of the bus.

Investigations are still underway to determine why flammable substances were present in the vehicle, and how they may have been related to the fatal fire. The cause of the incident would be clarified as the fire investigation progresses, said prosecutors.     [FULL  STORY]