OPENING CELEBRATION: Entry is free this weekend, and hundreds of artifacts are to be on display, including a jade necklace that is about 2,100 to 2,800 years old

Taipei Times
Date: Oct 20, 2019
By: Staff writer, with CNA

The National Museum of Prehistory’s (NMP) Tainan branch officially opened yesterday after a nine-

month soft opening, with hundreds of artifacts, including some dating back 5,000 years, on display.

Named the Museum of Archaeology, the branch is built on 2.44 hectares of land in the city’s Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學工業園區). Artifacts unearthed in the Tainan area are being showcased, some of which have never been exhibited to the public before.

Among the artifacts being showcased in the opening exhibition are carbonized rice pellets, which date back 4,300 to 5,000 years, NMP director Wang Chang-hua (王長華) said.

“The rice pellets show us that people lived in the area 5,000 years ago,” she said.
[FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 18 October, 2019
By: Leslie Liao

Nanmen Market opened its temporary location recently[/caption] After nearly four decades in business, Taipei’s Nanmen Market is closed for renovations. All of the market’s vendors have now settled into a new temporary location.

During the soft opening of Nanmen Market’s temporary new home, regulars flocked to find their favorite stalls. These frequent customers say they’d do anything to get to the new location, just so that they can buy their favorite foods.

The market opened 38 years ago, but it has closed for renovations. Different vendors are having different reactions to the temporary home they’ll be using until renovations finish.  [FULL  STORY]

Voice of America
Date: October 18, 2019
By: Ralph Jennings

TAIPEI, TAIWAN – Leaders in Europe are offering diplomatically isolated Taiwan a sudden chorus of

support this year, giving the democratic Asian island welcome international exposure and a morale boost during its spiraling struggles with China.
 
On Oct. 7, the Prague city council cut off a 3-year-old sister-city relationship with Beijing after China asked his city to uphold a policy that binds Taiwan and China under the same flag. This week lawmakers from France, Germany, the U.K. and the European Parliament launched the Formosa Club to strengthen relations with Taiwan, including trade and investment ties, the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Taipei said.
 
National governments around Europe are still expected to keep diplomatic relations with China instead of Taiwan. Beijing doesn’t allow both at once, and European countries value their links with the massive Chinese economy.    [FULL  STORY]

Hollywood star will attend 'Gemini Man' premiere in Taipei on Oct. 21

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/10/18
By: Teng Pei-ju, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — American actor Will Smith and Taiwanese director Ang Lee (李安) are arriving in Taipei this evening (Oct. 18) to promote the new film “Gemini Man,” which is scheduled to be premiered next Monday (Oct. 21).

The film’s distributor, Paramount Taiwan, said on Friday morning that Smith and Lee had rearranged their schedules and would arrive in Taipei Friday evening on a private jet, reported CNA. The two had originally planned to come to Taiwan on Oct. 20 after wrapping up their trip to Japan.
[FULL  STORY8]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/10/18
By: Liu Chien-pang and Matthew Mazzetta

Taipei, Oct. 18 (CNA) Police have busted a telecom fraud ring that tricked migrant workers into handing over their personal information and used it to register for phone numbers, which they then sold to other telecom fraud operations to scam victims of money, the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) said at a press conference on Friday.

A total of 12 suspects, including eight Vietnamese migrants and spouses, were arrested in raids that took place in several cities in Taiwan on Wednesday and Thursday, the CIB said.

The CIB's Telecom Investigation Corps Deputy Commander Lin Ming-chun (林明俊) said the suspects sent Vietnamese sales agents to locations frequented by migrant workers on weekends, where they obtained the victims' personal information by offering to help them register for a mobile phone number free of charge.

Because many migrant workers are unfamiliar with the application process and do not speak the local language, they often rely on middlemen to help them apply for phone and internet service, Lin said. In this case, however, the suspects allegedly used the migrants' personal information to apply for phone numbers for the purpose of selling them to telecom fraud organizations.
[FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan Internatinal
Date: 17 October, 2019
By: Shirley Lin

President Tsai Ing-wen says Taiwan hopes to pursue more cooperation with Demark. She was speaking on Thursday during a meeting with the deputy speaker of the Danish Parliament, Pia Kjaersgaard.

Tsai said that Denmark has invested in Taiwan’s offshore wind turbines and has shared its successes in the area of wind power with Taiwan. She said Taiwan aims to bring up the percentage of renewables in its energy mix to 20% by 2025.    [FULL  STORY]

Beijing can always outspend Taipei. It’s time to think small and mean.

Foreign Policy
Date: October 17, 2019
By: James R. Holmes

Give up and become Maoists.

That’s my counsel to Taiwan’s government and armed forces as they fret about the titan rousing

itself across the Taiwan Strait. And an increasingly wrathful titan it is. In recent years, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has stepped up the pace of military maneuvers near the island even as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) grandees mutter balefully about how Beijing has never renounced the use of armed force to bring Taipei under mainland rule.

Not only has the leadership never renounced force, it also vows regularly that it will use force to settle the dispute on its terms if Taiwan doesn’t buckle. In fact, Beijing transcribed its threat into law via its Anti-Secession Law back in 2005.

Surrender or conquest: Like a certain mob boss of Hollywood lore, the CCP supremo has made the islanders an offer they can’t refuse.

Now, I am not counseling surrender when I urge Taipei to embrace Maoism. Just the opposite. Taiwanese need not and must not give up their independence or their liberal democratic way of life. Rather, they must adapt Mao Zedong’s war-making methods—techniques meant to empower the weak to prevail over the strong in a trial of arms. Once military commanders accept—and come to feel in their guts—that Taiwan is now the weaker contender in the Taiwan Strait, they will learn to think in Maoist terms. Strategy, operational concepts, and weaponry for turning the tables on the strong will come naturally to them.    [FULL  STORY]

Filipinos get a kick out of Tagalog 'please keep quiet' sign posted inside bus in Taoyuan, Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/10/17
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Filipinos are getting a big chuckle out of a sign spotted inside a bus in

northern Taiwan, which admonishes Filipino passengers in Tagalog to not make noise.

A photo of the sign inside a bus first appeared on the Filipino migrant worker Facebook page Mga Pasyalan Sa Taiwan on Monday (Oct. 14) and was quickly shared that same day on website OFW Buddy and Facebook page Siklab PINOY SA Taiwan before being shared the next day PINOY Refresher. The posts drew many comments from Filipino migrant workers, who were amused at the sign's contents and the fact that only Tagalog was present, as opposed to Mandarin and the languages of other major migrant worker nationalities, such as Indonesian and Vietnamese.

The full text of the sign reads "Pakisuyo: Huwag Maingay!" which in Tagalog means "Please: don't be noisy!" Another photo on the page showed a Chinese version below the Tagalog sign, which read "Please keep quiet when inside the bus" (車內請保持安靜).

The photos were taken by Ariel Abalos, who lamented on Mga Pasyalan Sa Taiwan: "Reminder to all Filipinos here in Taiwan. Sadly, there are Filipino words and a Chinese translation written inside the bus." Abalos told Taiwan News that the photos were taken on Sunday evening (Oct. 13) at 7 p.m. as he rode the bus from the Taoyuan High Speed Rail Station to Taoyuan's Zhongli District.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/10/17
By: Elaine Hou and Joseph Yeh

Taipei, Oct. 17 (CNA) Taiwan will engage in talks with Tuvalu on how to combat climate change, Taiwan's foreign ministry said Thursday, following a recent appeal by the Pacific ally for help to deal with rising sea levels.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesperson Joanne Ou (歐江安) said at a press briefing that Taiwan has been working closely with Tuvalu for years on several matters, including climate change, and will continue to do so by discussing concrete cooperation on that issue.

The MOFA statement came after Tuvalu's new Prime Minister Kausea Natano issued a call for global partners to help his country with a land reclamation plan to cope with rising sea levels.

In a recent interview with Kyodo News of Japan, Natano said Tuvalu is at serious risk of losing its land due to rapidly rising sea levels and is planning a land reclamation project in response to the problem.    [FULL  STORY]