Focus Taiwan
Date: 07/09/2020
By: Chen Yun-yu and Emerson Lim

Taipei, July 9 (CNA) Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), a human rights lawyer and a former legislator of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, was conferred the National Order of Merit (Ordre national du Mérite), with the rank of knight, by the government of France on Thursday.

Jean-Francois Casabonne-Masonnave, head of the French Office in Taipei, pinned the medal to Yu at his official residence on behalf French President Emmanuel Macron.

"As a tireless fighter for human rights, you are faithful to your values despite all difficulties you have faced. Your values are in line with those being upheld by France — democracy, freedom, protection of human rights," Casabonne-Masonnave said.

Yu was awarded for dedicating her career to advocating for women and LGBT rights in the past three decades.    [FULL  STORY]

INVALID MEETING: Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua urged the firm’s two warring factions to step up and resolve the situation as soon as possible

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 10, 2020
By: Angelica Oung / Staff reporter

The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday rejected Tatung Co’s (大同) attempt to register new board directors, saying that the company has misapplied the law to block some shareholders from voting during its annual general meeting held on Tuesday last week.

“We don’t consider [the meeting] valid,” Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) told reporters, calling for the two warring factions to step up and resolve the situation as soon as possible.

“Either the firm can hold a legitimate shareholder’s meeting or the minority stakeholders can organize their own under Article 173 of the Company Act (公司法),” she said.

The ministry could intervene under Article 195 of the act if the situation remained in limbo, as the current directors’ terms are ending, but only as a last resort, she said.    [F\ULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 08 July, 2020
By: John Van Trieste

Taiwan straddles the tropics, and that means that summers here can be downright unpleasant. Besides those who work outdoors, the people who bear the brunt of Taiwan’s sticky summer weather are probably students and teachers. That’s because, despite whatever other high-tech gadgets they may have in their classrooms, many schools here still don’t have air conditioners. Now the education ministry says this is going to change.

Air conditioning for all! That’s the promise Education Minister Pan Wen-chung has made to students and teachers. By 2022, Pan says, air conditioning will be installed in 100% of elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and vocational high schools across Taiwan. Pan also says that old air conditioners will be replaced, along with electrical systems in school buildings that are over 15 years old.

This leaves a lot of installing to be done. Despite Taiwan’s muggy climate, only 80% of its high schools have air conditioning. The situation is even worse in elementary and middle school- only 37% of them have anything beyond maybe a fan to cool students down.

Work will need to start quickly. Whereas in past decades the heat may have just been unpleasant, these days, it can be downright dangerous. Five of the last six years have been the warmest on record for Taiwan. Three of the years between 2015 and 2019 saw record-breaking average yearly temperatures.    [FULL  STORY]

Traffic Technology Today
Date: J\uly 8, 2020
By: Tom Stone

The Taiwanese Central Police University has recently completed the installation of an additional Forum8 drive simulator at its training facility located in the city of Taoyuan. The Central Police University is the only educational institute of its type dedicated to training the future leaders of the Taiwan police in the latest traffic science with the primary role of maintaining security and traffic safety throughout the country.

Students’ studies include latest traffic rules, how to treat and investigate accidents, traffic process management, and traffic safety management, with lecturers involved in researching as well as teaching in these fields.

The Taiwan Police have to regularly deal with a number of specific traffic and driver-related situations particularly motorcycles frequently changing lanes and drivers of parked cars suddenly opening their doors without considering other road users or pedestrians. The Forum8 drive simulators enables students to learn how to react to these and other common scenarios without leaving the classroom and under safely controlled conditions.

The addition of the new simulator means that the University now has three of the Forum8 systems, which are networked together to enable students to train in groups managed from a central control desk. Based on award-winning 3D virtual reality software, VR Design Studio (aka UC win-Road), the simulators provide the students with a highly realistic 3D experience of driving through Taiwan City’s streets, tunnels and bridges as well as local country roads using production-class vehicle controls that are able to reproduce the motion and feel of driving a normal police car on different road surfaces.

During each session, the instructor is able to change the light and weather conditions to provide the widest experience of driving at different times of day or night as well as in rain, hail, snow, and fog. The software also includes a selection of 25 scenarios representing the typical traffic conditions found in Taiwan, including RTAs, pedestrians stepping into the road, sudden lane swapping and failure of other drivers to obey traffic signals and road junction etiquette, that the instructor can activate at random intervals.    [FULL  STORY]

Most of the Vietnamese caught came from rural northern Vietnam, paid high fees to be smuggled to Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/07/08
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The number of Vietnamese attempting to illegally enter Taiwan has increased this year, with the Coast Guard having intercepted boats attempting to smuggle them in on two separate occasions in the first half of 2020 — one on March 20 involving 31 Vietnamese nationals and the other on July 6 involving 30, according to a Liberty Times report on Wednesday (July 8).

Most of the illegal Vietnamese immigrants came from rural northern Vietnam and paid high fees to be smuggled to Taiwan.

Huang Shih-hsien (黃世賢), deputy chief of the Investigation Branch of the Coast Guard Administration, said Wednesday that almost all of these illegal immigrants had once worked in Taiwan legally but were deported because they had either overstayed their visas or run away from their employers before their contracts had expired. In order to reenter Taiwan, they first snuck across the China-Vietnam border to Guangdong Province with the help of human smugglers, then boarded Chinese fishing boats before transferring to Taiwanese fishing vessels in the Taiwan Strait.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 07/08/2020
By: Wu Hsin-yun, Tai Yu-pei and Joseph Yeh

Taipei, July 8 (CNA) A child welfare organization on Wednesday urged parents to be more alert to internet safety, saying that at least a quarter of Taiwan's children had been approached online to share revealing or sexually explicit photos.

According to the non-profit Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF), its recent survey on internet safety and privacy found 36 percent of Taiwanese 11-15 years of age had received requests via social media for in-person meetings with strangers.

The survey also showed that 46 percent of Taiwanese in that age group had been propositioned online to start relationships, while another 36 percent had shared important personal information, including their names and photos, with strangers on the internet, the foundation said.

Lee Hung-wen (李宏文), head of the CWLF's policymaking center, said the findings of the survey were alarming and showed many minors in Taiwan were not aware of the importance of protecting their privacy online.   [FULL  STORY]

MORAL COURAGE: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged the global community to face China’s intention to subdue Taiwan and reject such irrational requests

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 09, 2020
By: Lin Chia-nan / Staff reporter

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday strongly condemned the Chinese government for meddling with US officials’ interactions with Taiwan after FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed China’s efforts to discourage US officials from visiting Taiwan.

The greatest long-term threat to the US’ information security and intellectual property, as well as its economic vitality, is China’s counterintelligence and economic espionage operations, Wray told a video event at the Hudson Institute in Washington.

Beijing is engaged in a highly sophisticated and maligning foreign influence campaign, with methods that include bribery, blackmail and covert deals, he said.

Giving an example, Wray said that when a US official plans to visit Taiwan, China would hit back at a company from the official’s home state by withholding licenses to manufacture products in China.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 07 July, 2020
By: Shirley Lin

The new controversial Hong Kong national security law could serve as Beijing’s blueprint to solving the Taiwan issue. That was the subject of a Washington Post opinion piece published on Tuesday and penned by the news agency’s former Beijing branch chief, John Pomfret.

Pomfret said the law could be a potential model of how Beijing would deal with Taiwan. He was quoting China’s Modern Think Tank Forum President Li Su who is a strong advocate of taking Taiwan by force. Pomfret said Li has described the law as Beijing’s “test case” for solving cross-strait issues.    [SOURCE]

• New rules allowing officers to demand information from political groups in Taiwan and elsewhere slammed by Taipei
• Its Mainland Affairs Council says legislation will sabotage Taiwan’s relations with city

South China Morning Post
Date: 7 Jul, 2020
By: Lawrence Chung and Kimmy Chung

Taipei has condemned new regulations under the Hong Kong national security law empowering its police to demand information from groups outside its jurisdiction as a violation of Taiwanese freedoms which will sabotage relations with the city.

As some Taiwan and overseas political groups made clear they would snub any attempts from Hong Kong police to get them to provide details about organisations operating in the city, legal experts said it was unrealistic the force would be able to extend its reach and enforce such demands in other parts of the world.

Restaurant in Taiwan offers solace to Hong Kong protester seeking sanctuary

The self-ruled island’s Mainland Affairs Council on Tuesday slammed the Hong Kong government over the implementation rules it introduced under the national security legislation, which Beijing imposed on the city on June 30 targeting acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security.

The regulations grant Hong Kong police sweeping powers and allows the city’s security chief to order political groups in Taiwan and elsewhere to provide information on the activities, personal details, assets, income and spending of an organisation in Hong Kong “in a prescribed manner within the specified period”.    [FULL  STORY]

Effective July 7, Hong Kong residents no longer be able to enjoy online freedoms they hold dear

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/07/07
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The implementation rules for Article 43 of the new national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing were announced on Monday (July 6) and entered into force the next day, empowering the authorities to request that platform service providers remove or restrict access to messages online deemed to endanger national security.

From July 7, Hong Kong residents will no longer be able to enjoy the online freedoms they hold dear. The new rules stipulate that the police can order publishers, platforms, or network service providers to remove or to block access to messages they unilaterally decide pose a threat to national security. In cases where these are not immediately deleted, the police can get a warrant to seize the relevant electronic devices and forcibly decrypt the offending messages.

The draconian penalties for individuals and organizations who violate the rules are in place too. For instance, if someone who published a message believed to endanger national security fails to comply with the police order to remove it without a reasonable excuse, that person could face a fine of HK$100,000 (US$12,900) and imprisonment for one year. If a service provider refuses to cooperate, it could be slapped with a fine of $100,000 and imprisonment for six months.

Article 43 also substantially expands the authorities' surveillance powers to detect "harmful" messages. Applications for covert surveillance and the interception of communications can only be authorized by the chief executive, without court approval or a warrant, and "less intrusive covert surveillance" operations can be carried out by officers handpicked by the chief executive.
[FULL  STORY]