Taipei Times
Date: Jun 08, 2019
By: Wu Liang-yi and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday published a preview of regulations

on warning labels on hair products that are to take effect on July 1, 2021.

The agency made the announcement following an amendment to the Cosmetic Hygiene and Safety Act (化妝品衛生安全管理法) mandating additional warning labels on hair products, such as advising users of perm, dye and color removal products to avoid contact with skin and that such products should be used once a week at the most.

Existing regulations only cover products that do not require heating, but the amendments cover perming products, the agency said.

Dyeing and perming harm the hair, Taiwan Dermatological Association spokesperson Huang Yu-hui (黃毓惠) said.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International 
Date: 06 June, 2019
By: Paula Chao

The defense ministry says it has submitted a letter to the United States requesting

weaponry. The ministry says the procurement process is progressing normally.

The military plans to purchase 108 M1A2 Abrams tanks, 1,240 TOW missiles, 409 Javelin tank-killer missiles, and 250 stinger missiles from the US.

The defense ministry said on Thursday the arms sale will help boost Taiwan’s defensive capabilities and ensure regional peace and stability.

Also on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrew Lee said that since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, Washington has demonstrated its firm support for Taiwan by reaffirming the Taiwan Relations Act and approving arms sales to the island three times.    [FULL  STORY]

EE Times
Date: 06.06.19 
By: Nitin Dahad

Taipei – It’s not often you meet a government minister with genuine motivation to address

the needs of the office he or she is in. I’ve met many over the years, and they often they say all the right buzzwords for the moment and for the audience, just to gain political points and win votes. In fact, I met one of the leadership candidates for the UK prime minister’s role at an event in London last evening, and not a word of his interaction with me or his speech seemed genuine. He was just after votes.

But that certainly isn’t the case with Taiwan’s Liang-Gee Chen, the minister for the office of science and technology (MOST) in the country.  EE Times sat down with him at Innovex in Taipei last week, a startup exhibition and pitching forum that ran alongside Computex. As my colleague Junko Yoshida previously wrote, he’s labeled as Taiwan’s startup minister but really knows what he’s talking about, since he also happens to be an IEEE fellow.

Chen Liang-Gee
Chen is out to make a difference for Taiwan’s innovation economy, and I had the opportunity to interview him after I had visited various startups, accelerators and a fascinating tour of the country’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) with its huge complex in Hsinchu City. I also was a judge at the 2019 Computex d&i awards, so really got a flavor of the breadth and diversity of Taiwan’s large as well as emerging technology companies.

What struck me most during this visit to Taipei and Hsinchu is that Taiwan is putting a big effort into changing its image as simply a manufacturing hub for the electronics industry. What I saw (and maybe my program was intentionally focused this way) is many startup companies building upon the hardware heritage to provide services, and these were mainly around artificial intelligence (AI) addressing real world problems – like medtech and healthcare, as well as agriculture and manufacturing.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/06/06
By: Chang Kuo-tsai, Taiwan News, Contributing Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) won her sobriquet as

“Spicy Taiwanese Sister” when she flat out rejected the “one country, two systems” framework for Taiwan at an impromptu press conference on January 2, after China President Xi Jinping (習近平) came out in support of the idea the same day.

Tsai’s reaction won praise from plenty of online sources, with people calling her “Spicy Taiwan Sister” (辣台妹). In response, Tsai said, “I am ‘spicy’ because I defiantly stand my ground and voice my opinions.”

Very well-said, but I must admit to having doubts about her statement, “I defiantly stand my ground.”

Perhaps you still remember the historic phone call that Tsai made to the then United States president-elect Donald Trump on December 2, 2016. The truth is that Tsai waited two entire weeks to call Trump after her team was informed that Trump would take her call, according to Stephen J. Yates, a former security advisor to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/06/06
By: Yang Ming-chu, Emerson Lim, Chung Yu-chen and Flor Wang

Taipei, June 6 (CNA) Lin Chi-ling (林志玲), one of Taiwan’s top models and actress, tied

the knot with Akira, a member of Japanese boy band, EXILE, on Thursday.

Akira, 37, made the announcement on the official Facebook fan page of EXILE, surprising the entertainment world in Japan and Taiwan.

According to Akira, he and the 44-year-old Lin have been friends for eight years. They met when performing in a play in Japan in 2011 and began dating late last year, he said.

Akira said he was deeply attracted to Lin’s character and the way she always prioritizes her family despite her busy work schedule.    [FULL  STORY]

DERAILMENT: A probe found fault with the driver for turning off the automatic train protection signaling system while the train was traveling over the speed limit

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 07, 2019
By: Jason Pan  /  Staff Reporter

Yilan County prosecutors yesterday charged a train driver and two Taiwan Railways

Administration (TRA) supervisors with criminal negligence in connection with a fatal derailment last year that killed 18 people and injured more than 200.

The driver, Yu Chen-chung (尤振仲), should be held responsible for the derailment of Puyuma Express No. 6432, because he had switched off the automatic train protection (ATP) signaling system while the train was traveling over the speed limit before it derailed near Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳) at 4:50pm on Oct. 21 last year, the Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office said.

An investigation found that the train was traveling at 141kph when approaching a bend near Suao’s Sinma Station (新馬), where the speed limit for the express train was set at 75kph.

“Prior to the incident, at 4:17pm, Yu breached TRA operation rules by switching off the ATP system, after which the train lost the system’s protective function, and Yu failed to report this condition,” the indictment said.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International 
Date: 05 June, 2019
By: John Van Trieste

As summer arrives, many in Taiwan begin thinking about their electricity bill. But home appliance experts say there’s widespread misunderstanding about what is eating up the most power.

The arrival of June means the start of summer electricity prices. People looking to save money may worry about turning on the air conditioner, but those in the home appliance trade say that shouldn’t be the main concern.    [FULL  STORY]

South China Morning Post
Date: 5 Jun, 2019 
By: Lawrence Chung

The mayor of Kaohsiung, Han Kuo-yu, has joined the race to become Taiwan’s next president, with observers saying that if he wins his party’s nomination to challenge for the top job the contest may be seen as a proxy for the tense dispute between Beijing and Washington.

Han, a former businessman who represents the Kuomintang (KMT), overturned a huge majority to win the Kaohsiung seat – previously held by President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) – in November’s local elections.

His popularity was seen by many as the catalyst for the KMT winning 15 of the 22 city and county seats up for grabs in the poll. Such was the scale of the victory that Tsai promptly stepped down as chairwoman of the DPP.

Han, who is widely regarded as Beijing’s preferred candidate for the presidential election in January, announced his candidacy on Wednesday.    [FULL  STORY]

Saga of corruption in Hualien continues with former Magistrate’s Deputy Secretary General impeached for bribing local media

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/06/05
By: Duncan DeAeth, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Taiwan’s Control Yuan completed a probe of Hsieh Kung-ping (謝公秉) on Tuesday (June 4), deciding to impeach the former Deputy Secretary General of the previous Hualien County Magistrate, Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁), for corrupt actions taken while in public office.

In a vote of 11 to 0, the Control Yuan members determined that Hseih was guilty of misusing public funds to pursue an unscrupulous campaign of media manipulation in Hualien, which involved offering bribes and a program of financial incentives for reporters and news networks to favorably promote the administration of Fu Kun-Chi.

Fu Kun-chi has a history of committing financial crimes, and many speculate he was also directly involved with the campaign to manipulate the local media with Hseih. The former magistrate was recently released from prison in April, after serving seven months of his original eight month sentence for crimes of stock market manipulation and insider trading, which he committed over a decade ago.

Along with Hseih, the former head of the Research and Evaluation Section of Hualien local county government, Lin Chin-hu (林金虎), was also impeached for his involvement in the corrupt campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion.    [FULL  STORY]