Chen gave a press conference on prison reform progress Monday

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/02/25
By: Ryan Drillsma, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) said Monday Taiwan’s prisons are likely to see robotic patrol systems in the future, CNA reports.

The minister said a shortage in manpower will soon force Taiwan to seek the assistance of technology. Prisons will have to adopt a “smart model,” in which human patrol guards are replaced by robots and drones are used for extra surveillance purposes.

Chen made the comments during a press conference on Monday, when he presented the ministry’s third biannual progress report following the August 12 2017 Presidential Office National Conference on Judicial Reform.

The minister said the prison system is much more open now than it used to be, with a heavier focus on management and protecting inmate rights. While punishment used to be the end goal, a heavier focus is now given to reformative measures, and inmates are treated just like other nationals but in prison uniforms.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/25
By: Liu Li-jung and William Yen

Taipei, Feb. 25 (CNA) Over 700 shipments of goods sent to Taiwan through air express companies in January were found by customs officials to contain items not allowed to enter the country, a Customs Administration official said Monday.

The items were detected during a special investigation conducted by the administration in January in two phases as part of an overall effort to keep pork items from countries affected by Asian swine fever (ASF) out of Taiwan.

The campaign has sought to keep ASF, which is lethal to pigs, from harming Taiwan’s pig-farming industry.

It was also targeted at high risk goods, including firearms, illegal drugs and other controlled substances, meat products, counterfeit products and items that have been disguised to avoid tariffs, the Customs Administration said.    [FULL  STORY]

HIGH-RISK CASES: The health ministry is to implement an active warning system to prevent child abuse, instead of responding to reports after child abuse takes place

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 26, 2019
By: Lee I-chia  /  Staff reporter

The number of deaths from serious child abuse last year fell to its lowest in five years, the Ministry of

Health and Welfare said yesterday.

After several reports of serious child abuse over the past few months sparked a public outrage, the Legislative Yuan’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee asked government agencies to report on their child protection programs and regulations.

The number of child or adolescent deaths caused by serious abuse was 15 last year, lower than the previous four years, which ranged from 18 to 31 deaths a year, ministry data showed.

About 70 percent of the victims were under six years old and about half were under three, the data showed.    [FULL  STORY]

The trail meanders across the hillside forest of the low elevation mountains

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/02/24
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Government and private organizations worked together to plant more than 100

cherry trees along the middle section of the Paoma Historic Trail (跑馬古道) on Feb. 23, Luodong Forest District Office said in a news release on the same day.

The planting of the cherry trees was a joint effort of the Luodong Forest District Office, Jiaoxi Township Office, and a private foundation dedicated to beautifying the environment of the county, the office said.

The Paoma Historic Trail, located within Jiaoxi (礁溪) and Toucheng (頭城) townships in Taiwan’s northeastern county of Yilan, is part of the south route of the Tamsui-Kavalan Historical Trails (淡蘭古道) connecting the Tamsui Subprefecture in the north with the Kavalan Subprefecture in the east, which dates back to the Qing Dynasty. The trail system was an essential transportation lifeline connecting the east and the west in the old days.

Today, the Paoma Historic Trail connecting Wufeng Rd. in Jiaoxi with Provincial Highway 9 is 6.7 kilometer in length. The trail meanders across the hillside forests of the low elevation mountains, with the middle section of the trail providing good views to the Lanyang Plain and the offshore Turtle Island.
[FULL  STORY

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/24
By: Sophia Yeh and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Feb. 24 (CNA) Deputy Premier Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) gave his support for made-in-Taiwan video games and creative freedom after Chinese netizens launched a boycott against a game with an embedded image they said mocked Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).

In a Facebook post Saturday, Chen praised the video game, Devotion (還願), as a work of a group of young Taiwanese who created a “unique Taiwan-style horror” game with Taiwanese elements combining traditional customs and aspects of daily life.

“Only in countries with democracy and freedom can creation be free from restrictions,” said Chen.

Devotion, a horror riddle-solving game created and developed by Taiwanese game developer Red Candle Games for global digital distribution platform Steam, faced a boycott by users in China just days after its release on Feb. 19.    [FULL  STORY]

‘MORON XI’: The developer of the Taiwanese-made online game said that an employee had used an image that was not made known to its Chinese publisher

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 25, 2019
By: Staff writer

Sales of Devotion (還願) have been strong, despite a boycott in China over accusations that the Taiwanese-

developed online game includes an image that mocks Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), Chinese-language online media outlet New Talk reported yesterday.

Devotion is a horror-themed, riddle-based game created and developed by Red Candle Games that was released on Tuesday last week. The first-person game depicts the life of a family shadowed by religious belief in a Taiwanese apartment complex in the 1980s.

However, many in China called it a “Taiwanese independence game” and vowed to boycott it after seeing an image in the game that apparently mocks Xi, with the Chinese characters of his name and Winnie the Pooh displayed in ancient calligraphy style on a charm that Taoists believe exorcises ghosts.

Online game review Web site Spiel Times reported that “Devotion included a poster that said ‘Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh moron.’”

The company on Wednesday apologized over the image, saying it had removed images in an updated version.    [FULL  STORY]

Business Recorder
Date: February 23, 2019 
By: Parvez Jabri

TAIPEI: A survey of more than 1,000 employees in Taiwan shows that 90 percent of them are dissatisfied with their current salary, a six-year record high, a survey released by Taiwan’s online job bank Yes123 showed.

The estimated number of employed people in Taiwan is 9.06 million, which means about 8.06 million are not satisfied.  More than 80 percent of the respondents said their salary was not adjusted for more than one year, while 54 percent said their salary was cut due to shrinking bonuses.

Nearly 54 percent of those surveyed said they were unable to strike a balance between family and career due to low salary, according to the survey.

The survey was based on questionnaires completed by 1,064 employees aged 20 and above from January 24 to February 11.    [FULL  STORY]

Hong Kong entertainers also labeled with PRC flag

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/02/23
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has protested against the use of the red

flag with five golden stars of the People’s Republic of China used to label Taiwanese artists in an online entertainment poll, reports said Saturday.

The movie-related website T.C. Candler put up dozens of pictures of male and female singers, actors and other entertainers from across the region in its first poll to find “The 100 Most Handsome Faces” and “The 100 Most Beautiful Faces” of Asia, the Apple Daily reported.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/23
By: Lee Shien-feng and Chi Jo-yao

Taipei, Feb. 23 (CNA) A Taiwanese forestry expert has documented for the first time an old-growth forest

in Yushan National Park featuring three giant trees taller than 60 meters after a seven-day trek to the area.

The one-hectare forest was first discovered in 2007, but its location was not recorded, and Rebecca Hsu (徐嘉君), an assistant researcher at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, wanted to find where it was and explore it further.

After a seven-day, 80-kilometer hike into the mountains with her mountaineering team, Hsu found the untouched forest with giant trees.

Three trees in the forest stood out — one Taiwan spruce and two Taiwanias — that had diameters of 2.3-3.5 meters and heights of 63-64 meters, close to that of a 20-story building, Hsu said.  [FULL  STORY]