The video-sharing app has more than 3 million active users in Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/14
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – With more than 500 million users around the world, a Chinese-made app for sharing short videos could be a “Huawei-sized problem” that poses a national security threat to the West, according to a recent U.S. think tank report.

The China-based video-sharing mobile app TikTok is fast becoming the most downloaded app in the world, which, outside China, sees 80 million users in the U.S. and 120 million users in the rest of the world. A report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics stated that the app today has become alarmingly popular among the U.S. armed forces.

“TikTok, like the vast majority of social apps, collects location data,” the report says. The filming could also leak confidential national security information if it’s taken inside military facilities, and disclose their identities.

The scholar’s woe didn’t come out of nowhere, as the social app is believed to be able to gather a lot of data on users, and be easily accessed and leveraged by Beijing. The information could feed the authoritarian regime’s existing gargantuan image database, allowing its national surveillance software to recognize Western faces more accurately, as well as to serve as “espionage and manipulation of public opinion.”    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/01/14
By: Lee Hsien-feng and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Jan. 14 (CNA) An investigation is underway to seek the truth behind the death of some 1,200 birds in an apparently organic rice paddy in Taitung County after powerful pesticides were identified as the culprit, local police said Monday.

The Taitung Animal Disease Control Center chief Li Huan-tang (黎煥棠) said Monday that tests of grain particles retrieved from the stomach of the dead birds last week found them to contain trace amounts of the pesticide carbofuran.

The center therefore determined the dead birds were killed by the chemical, one of the most toxic carbamate pesticides marketed in Taiwan that is used to kill insects during the period when rice and vegetable seedlings are being cultivated.

Taitung County Agriculture Department head Hsu Rui-kuei (許瑞貴) said after the findings were made public that the National Police Agency has launched an investigation to determine if the birds were illegally poisoned to death.    [FULL  STORY]

ADVANCE CARE PLANNING: Separately, Taipei published a list of hospitals that can help people record what treatment they want to receive if they are unable to communicate

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 15, 2019
By: Lee I-chia  /  Staff reporter

A planned “open hospitals” program would allow pregnant women to make prenatal visits at

nearby clinics and give birth under the care of the same physician at cooperating hospitals, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said yesterday.

Ministry of the Interior data showed that about 180,000 babies were born in Taiwan last year, the lowest number in eight years, and the program should make childbirth more mother-friendly in the hope of boosting the fertility rate, the health ministry said.

Some clinics refuse to perform deliveries due to limited resources, but under the “open hospitals” program, hospitals and clinics would share resources, including operating theaters, examination equipment and medical practitioners.

Dealing with only one physician should also put pregnant woman at ease, the ministry said.
[FULL  STORY]

Arab News
Date: January 13, 2019
By: Minxin Pewi

The unfolding geopolitical contest between China and the US has been described by many as a new Cold War. If it ever becomes a hot one, the flashpoint could be Taiwan, owing in large part to Chinese policy toward the island.

China’s government suspended diplomatic contact with Taiwan in June 2016 because the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which had just returned to power, refused to recognize the so-called 1992 Consensus, the political basis for the “One China” principle. Since then, however, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has pursued a moderate policy, disappointing hardline DPP supporters.

That is not good enough for China, which has continued to tighten the screws on Taiwan. For example, it persuaded five other countries to follow it in severing diplomatic ties, reducing the number of countries that maintain formal relations with the island to just 17. China has also taken steps to stifle tourism from the mainland: Whereas nearly 4.2 million mainland Chinese tourists visited Taiwan in 2015, when the pro-Beijing Kuomintang government was in power, the total fell to just 2.7 million in 2017.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/13
By: Stanley Cheung and Wu Sheng-hung,Central News Agency

Hong Kong, Jan. 13 (CNA) Taiwan launched a promotional campaign to sell winter-harvested fruit such as jujube, guava, wax apples, oranges, pineapples, papaya, grapes, atemoya and honey apples in Hong Kong on Friday, the Council of Agriculture (COA) announced.

“We would like to share the sweet taste from Taiwan with the people of Hong Kong as the Spring Festival approaches,” said COA divisional chief Tang Shu-hua (唐淑華), at a promotional event that day.

This is the first time the Cabinet-level council has worked with the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), the nation’s foremost nonprofit trade promoting organization, to promote and sell fresh seasonal fruit from Taiwan in the special administrative region of China.

In addition to promotional activities, the two are also arranging meetings between Hong Kong sellers and representatives of farmers’ associations and cooperatives in Taiwan to boost business contacts, according to TAITRA.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/01/13
By Chen Wei-ting and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Jan. 13 (CNA) A group of mountaineers has spent the past three and a half years equipping 29 remote huts on mountains in Taiwan with portable altitude chambers (PACs), a life-saving device for mountain climbers suffering from altitude sickness.

More than 50 volunteers who are passionate mountain climbers joined the program initiated by Wang Shih-hao (王士豪) and the Taiwan Wilderness Medical Association (TWMA) in 2015 to deliver PACs to mountains at an elevation of 2,500 meters or higher.

Each year they set off for mountaineering trips in the few months with weather conditions fit for the activity, according to Wang, the TWMA’s deputy president and a physician specializing in emergency treatment.    [FULL  STORY]

South China Morning Post 
Date: 13 January, 2019
By: Shi Jiangtao 

• Fragile power balance in Taiwan Strait exposed with superpowers locked in a trade war
• Taipei using the US as a hedge against mainland’s pressure campaign

Beijing’s renewed push for reunification with Taiwan has exposed the fragility of the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait – a relationship increasingly in question with China and the United States locked in a superpower rivalry over trade and geopolitical friction.

Government advisers and analysts warn that the deadlocked cross-strait relations are entering a dangerous period, with an expectation of escalating tensions in the months ahead as an increasingly isolated Taipei tilts further towards Washington, seeking a hedge against Beijing’s aggressive pressure campaign.

The self-governed island’s fate – the most disruptive factor in Beijing’s complex relations with Washington – could touch off a chain reaction that exacerbates the strain on bilateral ties, already mired in a protracted trade war and escalating technology race, they say.
[FULL  STORY]

Lady Nai Nai reportedly applied for refugee status in Canada after accusations of fraud in Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/12
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Angry Taiwanese Canadians have formed a Facebook group to track down the whereabouts of Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), a blogger better known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), who fled to Canada with her family amid accusations of fraud.

Su, 44, her husband, cosmetic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), 38, and her father-in-law Huang Li-hsiung (黃立雄) fled to the United States last November when allegations surfaced that they had defrauded investors in a clinic to the tune of NT$1 billion (US$32.4 million).

On January 5, they reportedly drove with two other relatives from Buffalo, New York, to Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, where Su allegedly applied for asylum as a refugee. Canadian immigration stopped them at the border, but Huang apparently holds a permanent resident permit for the country.

The move touched off a furor among Taiwanese citizens already living in Canada, the Liberty Times reported.    [FULL  STORY]