Taiwan News
Date: 2016-07-13
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

New Power Party Legislator Freddy Lim Wednesday called on the government to demarcate Taiwan’s territory in the South China Sea and abandon the U-shaped line that overlaps much of China’s so-called nine-dash line in order to effectively defend Taiwan’s sovereignty in the area in the aftermath of a high-profile ruling of a South China Sea arbitration case Tuesday.

An arbitral tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that China has no legal basis for claiming much of the South China Sea, therefore denying the nine-dash line China drafted to demarcate its claims to virtually the entire disputed region.

The tribunal said there was no evidence that China had historically exercised exclusive control over the waters or resources.

Lim asked Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee in the Legislature whether Taiwan will still insist on a U-shaped line that highly overlaps China’s nine-dash line claim, which has just been denied by The Hague. He questioned if the claim is as ridiculous as Taiwan’s sovereignty claim of Outer Mongolia.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/07/13
By Chu Che-wei and Lilian Wu

Taipei, July 13 (CNA) Two Russian suspects involved in First Bank’s automatic teller machines

(ATMs) theft have returned to Moscow, and police are now tracking down the third suspect in the heist.

First Bank, in its internal probe, found that 38 ATMs in the bank’s branches were hacked through the use of malware over the weekend, causing the machines to “spit” out bills continuously. The total losses amounted to more than NT$80 million (US$2.49 million), NT$10 million more than originally reported.

Police said the two suspects, identified only as Berezovskiy, 34, and Berkman, 28, boarded an early morning flight to Moscow via Hong Kong Monday, before First Bank resumed operations after the weekend.

Police have reported information on the duo to Interpol to help track them down.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: July 13, 2016

President Tsai Ing-wen attended the send-off of Republic of China (Taiwan) navy Kangding-

class frigate Dihua July 13 in southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City, having ordered its departure 24 hours early on a patrol of the South China Sea following the award rendered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

“This ship represents the ROC, and the uniforms of the crew members symbolize the responsibility entrusted by the citizens to defend the rights of the nation,” Tsai said while addressing the crew onboard the ship. “Because of the new changes in the South China Sea, this patrol has taken on great significance.”

According to the president, the award in the South China Sea arbitration initiated by the Philippines is a serious infringement on the rights of the ROC over the South China Sea islands and their surrounding waters.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 14, 2016
By: William Lowther / Staff reporter in WASHINGTON

China’s defiant reaction to the South China Sea ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in

The Hague — and Taiwan’s own rejection of the ruling — have been met with warnings from US pundits, although US Department of State sources said they needed more time to consider statements from Taipei and Beijing.

Taipei’s response openly rejecting the decision was “a big mistake,” New York University School of Law professor Jerome Cohen said.

He said that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was struggling to adjust “to an uncomfortable situation” and that she would be criticized at home for following Beijing’s “lawless line at the same time that Beijing was responsible for excluding Taiwan from participation in the arbitration.”

American Enterprise Institute research fellow Michael Mazza said: “Unfortunately, Taipei’s reaction to today’s [Tuesday’s] ruling may only deepen a feeling among other claimants that Taiwan is part of the problem rather than part of the solution.”     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: July 14, 2016
By: The China Post news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Farglory (遠雄) Chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄) hit back at the Taipei

City Government Wednesday over the beleaguered Taipei Dome project, saying that the halt to construction of the project posed a major public safety risk.

Chao, who held a press conference in Taipei, said that as construction on the stadium was ordered to a halt by city officials last May, the unfinished structure was a safety risk, especially with the approaching typhoon season.

A major concern is the 6-by-2-meter steel plates that make up part of the stadium’s roof structure. Each weighs 500 kilograms and 23 were ripped off by a powerful typhoon last year, Farglory said.

Although no one was injured in that incident, Chao implied that only with completion of the project could public safety issues be avoided.     [FULL  STORY]

A character from a popular video game will soon be a permanent fixture in Taichung.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/07/12
By: Tashken Davlet

Steve Wang, a Taiwan-born sculptor who works in Hollywood, will soon unveil a sculpture of a character from the popular video game series “Warcraft” at a public park in Taichung, Taiwan.

To celebrate Blizzard Entertainment’s 25th anniversary, and as a tribute to Taiwanese and Asian gamers, the game developer cooperated with the Taichung City Government to commission Wang to build a sculpture of Arthas, one of the best-known characters from Blizzard’s “Warcraft Universe,” in the Calligraphy Greenway, Taichung.

It is the company’s first public artwork in Asia.

Blizzard Entertainment is behind of the world’s most popular video games, including “Warcraft,” “Starcraft” and “Diablo.” A movie based on “Warcraft Universe” was released last month and is already the highest-grossing video game adaptation of all time.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-07-12
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

A draft amendment to the Labor Standard Law that aims to change the stipulation of “one official holiday” to “two official holidays” every seven days for private sector workers was passed in a preliminary review by the Legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee on Tuesday.

Taiwan International Workers’ Association researcher Wu Ching-ju hailed the pass of the draft proposal, saying she “agrees with it very much.”

On Tuesday the committee invited Minister of Labor Kuo Fan-yu to make a report on the government’s proposal of “one official holiday and one vacation day” per week for private sector workers. The committee also reviewed KMT Legislator John Wu’s draft amendment to the Labor Standard Law that if becomes law will award private sector employees “two official holidays” per week, the same as what military personnel, civil servants and teachers in the country receive.     [FULL  STYORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/07/12
By: Hsieh Chia-chen and S.C. Chang

Taipei, July 12 (CNA) Former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who had made

ceaseless efforts to highlight Taiwan’s sovereignty over Taiping Island, said Tuesday he was shocked and infuriated by the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s “absurd and unfair” ruling on the island’s status as a rock.

In a Facebook post, Ma said numerous government officials and domestic and foreign scholars and journalists have visited the South China Sea island between December last year and May this year, witnessing an island that has fresh water, rich agricultural produce and full functions to support human habitation.

As of the end of April, 2016, he added, international media had carried 430 articles fully reporting the fact that Taiping Island is an bona fide island that meets the definition of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 13, 2016
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

Water conservationists yesterday urged the government to transform the nation’s

17 irrigation associations into a collective government agency to bring agricultural water management under government purview, but the proposal met with opposition from association members.

Irrigation associations have water rights over 70 percent of the nation’s farm water resources, but they can sell water and lease properties at their own discretion without being subject to government supervision, Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union spokesperson Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said at a legislative hearing.

“An irrigation association in Yunlin can make as much as NT$300 million [US$9.31 million] per year by selling water to Formosa Plastics Group’s naphtha cracker in the county. While water resources should be considered a public asset for common use, irrigation associations can make a profit selling water without being answerable to anyone,” Chen said.     [FULL  STORY]

Two weeks after major elections in Mongolia, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy holds a forum in the region to promote democratic awareness.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/07/11
By: Yuan-ling Liang

On July 9 Hsu Szuchien (徐斯儉), president of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD), led 11

Taiwanese, including activists and experts in politics, to attend the East Asia Democracy Forum held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Hsu, also an associate research fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, took over as president of TFD on June 17.

The two-day meeting tackled several issues, including women’s and youth’s social participation, public involvement in politics and government transparency. More than 40 representatives from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Mongolia took part in the forum.

In his opening remarks, Hsu, an expert on social movements, said the involvement of citizens, especially women, teenagers and minorities, is key to democracy in Mongolia. They are also the main challenges for a democratic expansion in east Asia.     [FULL  STORY]