’ABRUPT AND UNREASONABLE’:During a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, three impromptu motions were passed

Taipei Times
Date: May 10, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

Lawmakers across party lines yesterday passed several extemporaneous motions to express their

opinions on the attachment of the “one China” principle to Taiwan’s invitation to this year’s World Health Assembly (WHA), which has been interpreted as yet another of Beijing’s attempts to browbeat the incoming Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government.

Amid snowballing controversy over the WHO’s unprecedented mention of the “one China” principle in Taiwan’s WHA invitation, the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee yesterday invited officials from several government agencies to answer questions regarding China’s recent spate of moves to foil Taiwan in the international arena.

During the meeting, a total of three extemporaneous motions were passed, including one by pan-green lawmakers and two by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

Proposed and signed by a number of lawmakers, including DPP Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) and New Power Party Lawmaker Freddy Lim (林昶佐), the pan-green camp’s motion stated that UN Resolution 2758, which is also mentioned in the invitation, does not pertain to the representatives of the Taiwanese government and its people to the UN and all related organizations.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/05/09
By: Tai Ya-chen and Y.F. Low

Taipei, May 9 (CNA) The mention of the “one China principle” by the World Health Organization

(WHO) in its invitation for Taiwan to attend the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA) is an attempt to denigrate the country’s status, Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (NSB) said Monday.

The bureau made the statement in a report to the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign and National Defense Committee. Among other things, the NSB’s responsibilities include analyzing developments that could have national security implications for Taiwan.

In a letter dated May 6 to Minister of Health and Welfare Chiang Been-huang (蔣丙煌), WHO Director-General Margaret Chan invited him to attend the May 23-28 meeting in Geneva. As in the previous seven years, Taiwan has been invited to attend as an observer under the name “Chinese Taipei.”

Unlike previous WHA invitations, however, the WHO mentioned the United Nations Resolution No. 2758, which was passed on October 25, 1971, recognizing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and expelling the representatives of the Republic of China (Taiwan).     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-05-08
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

In a Facebook post on Sunday, I-Mei Foods Co. CEO Luis Ko encourages people to put “eating wisdom” ahead of food’s “shelf life” amid rising international concern about food waste and the Taiwanese government’s first trans-agency campaign to save food products with imminent expiration dates.

In the post, Ko said that at a time when we gradually forget our ancestors’ “eating wisdom” and resort to “expiration date” to determine whether food products are still good to eat or not, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reveals the shocking finding that “global leftover food products are enough to feed 3.3 billion people.”

He said the finding awakens us to the fact that “we have come to a point in time where we must face up to the issue of leftover food products and rebuild our future eating wisdom.”

Ko made five suggestions with regard to the issue of leftover food products.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/05/08
By: Emmanuelle Tzeng and Kuo Chung-han

Paris, May 7 (CNA) Taiwan was awarded 78 medals –eight gold, nine silver and 61 bronze — at one of the world’s most prestigious invention fairs Saturday in Paris.

One of the gold medal winners at the Concours Lepine International Paris 2016 was the “Selfie Video Signature,” which makes a video recording of the person entering an electronic signature on an e-document, and thus substantiates the identity of the person.

It was invented by Wu Yu-jen (吳右任), CEO of Think Cloud Technology Co.

“The most difficult thing in making medical records electronic and paperless is the letter of consent,” and this invention can use a selfie camera to videotape the process of signing on a touch screen, thus showing who did the signing, said Wu, who is also head of Tai An Hospital Shuang Shi Branch.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-05-07
By: By Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Post offices will open 30 minutes later in the mornings beginning July 1 in a move seen as benefiting labor rights, reports said Saturday.

Weekend opening hours for post offices were abolished earlier, but state-run Chunghwa Post Co., Ltd. has now also decided that post offices should open at 8:30 a.m. instead of the current 8 a.m., reports said.

The new hours will go into use on July 1, and will be valid at a total of 1,278 post offices, the company said. The only exceptions are 42 post offices located inside government departments, where the start of operations varies between 7, 8 and 9 a.m. depending on the location, reports said.

While the post company motivates the changes by referring to amendments to the Labor Standards Act which are designed to favor employees, under the new formula postal workers will nevertheless see their lunchtime cut from one hour to just 30 minutes.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/05/07
By: Elaine Hou

Taipei, May 7 (CNA) A large number of Philippine voters in Taiwan are expected to cast absentee

votes Sunday in their country’s presidential election, before the polls close the next day, according to a Philippine official posted in Taiwan.

“It’s a presidential election, so people are more interested,” Keefe Dela Cruz, director of Assistance to Nationals at the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) in Taipei, told CNA Saturday.

Over a one-month period leading up to the May 9 presidential election, registered Philippine voters in Taiwan have the option to cast absentee ballots at MECO offices in Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung, he said.

The polling stations are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day until May 9, without any breaks, Cruz said.

There are approximately 30,600 registered absentee voters in Taiwan for the May 9 Philippine presidential election, and most of them are migrant workers, according to Cruz.     [FULL  STORY]

‘REASONABLE ARRANGEMENT’:China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said that Taiwan is able to attend the WHA under the political basis of the so-called ‘1992 consensus’

Taipei Times
Date: May 08, 2016
By: Staff writer, with CNA

Presidential Office spokesman Charles Chen (陳以信) on Friday confirmed that the nation had

received an invitation from the WHO to send officials to its annual World Health Assembly (WHA), which is to be held in Geneva later this month, adding that it would be passed on to the new government under president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).

For the past seven years, the WHO has sent an invitation to Taiwan to attend the WHA as an observer under the name “Chinese Taipei.”

What is different this time is that the invitation mentioned UN Resolution No. 2758 and the “one China” principle, which is understood to mean that there is only “one China,” with Beijing interpreting that as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) encompassing Taiwan.

The resolution was passed on Oct. 25, 1971, and recognized the PRC as “the only legitimate representative of China to the UN,” expelling the representatives of the Republic of China (ROC).
This year’s meeting is to be held in Geneva from May 23 to May 28, shortly after the inauguration of Tsai on May 20.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-05-06
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Changhua County police was reportedly upset Friday when one of its motorcycles turned up in a picture taken in a part of Iraq recently recaptured from terror group ISIS.

In a picture reportedly taken by The Associated Press in the Iraqi town of Ramadi, two men are seen riding a white motorcycle between the ruins. If one zooms in on the front of the vehicle, the Chinese characters for “Changhua County Police patrol motorcycle” reportedly become visible.

The police in the Central Taiwanese region said Friday that the motorcycle in question had been listed as scrapped. In future, such inscriptions will be covered or rubbed out, police said, while in the meantime a probe would be opened into the person responsible for the case.

The Changhua police began using 483 of the motorcycles in the picture in 2003, but many of them were taken out of service around 2014, with 358 being auctioned off. The remaining 125 were still being used around the county, police said.     [FULL  STORY]