Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/10/28
By: Huang Li-yun, Su Mu-chun, Chao Li-yan and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, Oct. 28 (CNA) A Chinese businessman was deported from Taiwan on Monday night after ripping down messages on a Lennon Wall in Taichung and being arrested for vandalism, according to the National Immigration Agency (NIA).

After collecting evidence, Taichung police turned the 35-year-old Chinese man surnamed Hu over to prosecutors for tearing down posters and messages supporting Hong Kong protests from a Lennon Wall in an underground passageway on Mei-tsun Rd. in Taichung on Sunday.

The Taichung District Prosecutors Office said Sunday it granted Hu a deferred prosecution, and ordered him to donate NT$30,000 (US$999) to charity and receive instruction on the rule of law before being allowed to leave Taiwan.

It also said Hu would be barred from leaving the country and required to report to the prosecutors office every day before the case ended, according to prosecutors.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Oct 29, 2019
By: Huang Hsin-po and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

In response to public curiosity about retired search and rescue dogs, the Ministry of the Interior’s Fire

Fighting Bureau has disclosed the approximate locations of retired dogs and the legal standards for their retirement.

The ministry said that per regulations, all search and rescue dogs are to be retired when they are seven or eight, depending on their physical condition.

Over the past three years, retired dogs have been available for public adoption by people who meet certain requirements, the ministry said.

The living environment of those wishing to adopt, their family members, whether they keep any other pets and whether there is a park near their residence are all factors taken into account, the bureau said.    [FULL  STORY]

Hsinchu City has secured an additional budget of NT$178 million (about US$5.75 million) for the project and will begin the second stage of renovating the 12 houses

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/10/27
By: George Liao, Taiwa

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The second stage of a project to renovate houses in the “Generals’ Village,” listed as Hsinchu City’s historic buildings, has been underway, according to a CNA report on Sunday (Oct. 27).

Hsinchu City Government issued a press release on Sunday, stating that Jin Cheng Xin Village (金城新村), which is also called the Generals’ Village, was built in 1958 by the government, according to the report. The military dependents’ village housed 89 households consisting of generals and their dependents.

With the passage of time, the village has faced the fate of being dismantled and removed. Since taking office, Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) has pushed to preserve the remaining 15 houses in the village by first listing them as historic buildings and then repairing them, the report said.

The city government said that three houses restored in the first stage of the “Generals’ Village” project were opened at the end of June. Assisted with many creative artifact fairs and cultural activities, the location, now occupied by restaurants and a floriculture classroom, is visited by many tourists on weekends and holidays, according to the report.    [FULL  STORY]

CAMPAIGNING: The president urged all groups, whether they support the Republic of China or Taiwan, to unite and send the right message to the international community

Taipei Times
Date: Oct 28, 2019
By: Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

While campaigning for re-election yesterday, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that China has

been spreading disinformation in an attempt to sway voters, and called on all pro-Taiwan forces to unite for the elections on Jan. 11.

“It is nearly 70 days until election day, and China has increased its coercion tactics… It has been doing so through a combination of military threats, disinformation and propaganda, infiltration, and other methods,” Tsai said in Taipei at the launch of a group of supporters comprised of dental professional associations.

“China has been producing fake news and disseminating rumors to deceive and mislead Taiwanese,” she said: “This misinformation and fake news is destroying our democracy, which is Taiwan’s most important asset.”

“When receiving fake news, I urge everyone not to pass it on to other people,” she said.
{FULL  STORY]

Radio aiwan Interrnational
Date: 25 October, 2019
By: Jake Chen

Nantou County in central Taiwan has built a number of raised “skywalks”, hoping that the views they provide of the county’s natural beauty will attract tourists. A total of seven now extend through short stretches of the county’s rugged mountains.

While some of these attractions have been successes, others are facing closure due to a lack of visitors.

Nantou County’s Qingjing Skywalk has welcomed over one million visitors since it opened to the public in 2017. The county government recently invested NT$30 million (US$ 980,000) in extending the skywalk in the hopes that this will attract even more visitors.

The upgraded skywalk is scheduled to reopen on October 30. Many of the tourists who came during a trial reopening ahead of the official event have praised the views the extended section offers.
[FULL  STORY]

Sales were stable at Asia's oldest contemporary art fair despite political tensions and the spectre of the US-China trade war

The Art Newspaper
Date: 25th October 2019
By: Lisa Movius

Art Taipei, Asia’s oldest extant contemporary art fair, closed its 26th edition earlier this week with reports of stable sales despite regional political tensions.

Though the art market of the self-governing democratic island claimed by Mainland China so far feels little pinch from the US-China trade war or protests in nearby Hong Kong, recent restrictions on travel to Taiwan by individual Mainlanders posited more of a challenge to fair participants.

The fair director Ching-Hsin Chung says: “Mainland collectors were down this year, but Japanese, Indonesian and Malaysian buyers took their place. Collectors from Beijing and Shanghai, in particular, were scarce.” But she adds that more came from southern China, due to its proximity to Hong Kong and Macau, from where Mainland Chinese can travel to Taiwan without a permit.

Of Art Taipei’s 141 galleries this year, 20 hailed from Hong Kong or the Mainland, Chung says, including stalwarts ShanghArt and newcomers Ink Studio: “We had two Beijing galleries drop out because they couldn’t get permits: Triumph Art and Another Art.” On Hong Kong, Chung says, “no one knows what things will be like in the next stage – we’re all watching, and all affected.”
[FULL  STORY]

52 arrested in Taipei brothel include Taiwanese, Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese suspects

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/10/25
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Over 50 people were arrested in a raid on a Taipei brothel on Thursday (Oct. 24), including dozens of foreign nationals from China, Thailand, and Vietnam, some of whom had posed as tourists, while others had been duped into thinking they would be working as beauticians.

At a press conference on Friday, Chen Wei-jen (陳偉仁), chief of an investigation squad at the Wanhua police precinct, said that police had received a tip that prostitution was suspected of occurring inside the notorious Diamond Building (鑽石大樓) on Kangding Road in Taipei's Wanhua District, reported CNA. At 6 p.m. on Thursday, nearly 100 officers raided the complex and sealed its exits.

Inside, officers arrested 10 Taiwanese suspected of organizing the sex trafficking ring and 42 sex workers, including six Taiwanese, two Chinese, six Vietnamese, and 28 Thai nationals, according to the report. Officers on the scene seized evidence including account books, condoms, and lubricant.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/10/25
By: Lin Chang-shun and Matthew Mazzetta

Taipei, Oct. 25 (CNA) Taiwan's Constitutional Court on Friday issued a judicial interpretation expanding

students' right to appeal disciplinary actions taken by their schools against them.

In Interpretation No. 784, the court ruled that students' right to file appeals in administrative courts, which are distinct from the ordinary court system that handles criminal and civil law, would not be subject to limits.

Under a 1995 ruling, also known as Interpretation No. 382, students could only file an appeal if the punishment would "change that student's status" and "hinder his/her opportunity to receive an education."

The review was prompted by the cases of two students in recent years who received demerits – which appear on one's academic record and can be considered in university admissions – but could not launch an appeal, since their cases did not meet the conditions set in Interpretation No. 382.
[FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan Internatinal
Date: 24 October, 2019
By: Shirley Lin

American Enterprise Institute scholar Gary Schmitt says that Taiwan’s government should regulate the

ownership of Taiwanese media companies.

Schmitt was speaking Wednesday during a seminar in Washington on ways the US and Taiwan can work together to counter Chinese threats.

Schmitt said that some owners of Taiwanese media outlets have huge interests in China or receive subsidies from China. He said this means that their reporting can be distorted by Chinese influence.    [FULL  STORY]