Lee tried to bargain with Chinese government so Lee Ming-che could attend father's funeral

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/09/25
By: Duncan DeAeth, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Earlier this week on Monday (Sept. 23), the wife of imprisoned Taiwanese

human rights activist Lee Ming-che (李明哲) asked authorities in China to grant him temporary release to return to Taiwan to mourn the death of his father who passed away on Aug. 17.

Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜), wife of Lee Ming-che, issued a statement Monday before boarding a flight to China to petition Chinese authorities directly. According to reports, Beijing has responded to Lee Ching-yu, denying her request to release the imprisoned Lee, declaring that granting such a request would be unlawful.

In her statement, Lee Ching-yu cited Chinese law, which says that the convicted are entitled to attend the funeral of their parents. Lee also offered to act “as a hostage” to make her own freedom collateral in order to convince Chinese authorities that her husband could be trusted to return.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/09/25
By: William Yen

Taipei, Sept. 25 (CNA) A comic book about same-sex romance emerged as the biggest winner

Wednesday in Taipei at the 10th Golden Comic Awards ceremony, Taiwan's highest national award for comics.

"Pink Ribbon" (粉紅緞帶) by Taiwanese comic artist Monday Recover (星期一回收日) grabbed the top prize — the Comic of the Year — and the Best Comic for Teenage Girls award, at the annual comic awards, organized by the Ministry of Culture (MOC).

The comic book, which was the author's first ever nomination in the awards, is about a same-sex romance between two teenage girls who meet at a carnival, she told reporters after the ceremony.

"The initial inspiration for the storyline is based on a personal experience where I met someone who left a deep impression on me and made me want to search and find that person again," she said.
[FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 24 September, 2019
By: Jake Chen

WinBus, a self-driving minibus developed in Taiwan, was unveiled in southern Taiwan on Tuesday for its first test run and media tour. The bus is set to be put to use in the fourth quarter of the year.

During its test run, the bus drove from the Automotive Research & Testing Center (ARTC) in Chiayi’s Lukang Township to the nearby Taiwan Glass Gallery. Along the way, the bus showcased it ability to brake when a pedestrian suddenly walks in front of it, and reduce its speed when vehicles in front of it slow down. 

The team at ARTC spent little over a year to develop the bus. They’ve equipped the bus with multiple 3D and 2D radars as well as a Global Positioning System to help it monitor its surroundings with an accuracy rate of more than 95%.     [FULL  STORY]

The United States can’t wait for the next crisis.

The Diplomat
Date: September 24, 2019
By: Michael Sobolik

Less than a month before the 70th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s establishment of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, millions of men and women in Hong Kong are demanding liberty: Not from a Western imperialist, but from the Chinese Communist Party. The breakdown of Hong Kong’s autonomy is a failure for China, as its current President Xi Jinping has no good options from which to choose.

The United States is right to stand with Hong Kong, and actually has significantly more leverage than most people think in deterring China from cracking down there. Since the 1997 handover by the United Kingdom, as part of the autonomy arrangement hammered out with Beijing, Hong Kong has enjoyed special economic treatment that has made the island-city a haven for capital from the Mainland. That privileged status, as much as anything else, is what has prevented the PRC from clamping down on the protesters to date. It also provides America with an important opening by which to pressure China.

But why does Beijing feel so threatened by Hong Kong’s democracy? The answer can be found in Chinese history. From the Iron Age to the Industrial Revolution, China’s abiding strategic weakness was disunity. In Confucian parlance, the Chinese emperor commanded “all things under heaven,” but in practice dynasties in China ebbed and flowed as territory expanded and contracted along its periphery. Yale historian Kenneth Scott Latourette observed this phenomenon in 1964 when he noted the existence of two Chinas: China proper, spanning from Hebei and Gansu down to Sichuan and Guangdong, and outlying sections of Manchuria and Mongolia to the north and Tibet and modern-day Xinjiang to the west. “The very size of the country,” Latourette observed, “militates against unity.”
[FULL  STORY]

Man in his 30s still in isolation ward, but out of danger: CDC

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/09/24
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

The CDC reported Taiwan's first case of XDR typhoid fever Tuesday September 24. (By Central News Agency)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Tuesday (September 24) announced the first case of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) typhoid fever, diagnosed in a man who had visited Pakistan.

XDR Salmonella Typhi is a life-threatening and highly infectious disease, resistant to five classes of antibiotics, leaving azithromycin as the only effective oral antibiotic.

While the Taiwanese patient had visited Morocco, India, Pakistan and Indonesia, tests showed he most likely contracted the virus during his stay in Pakistan, the Central News Agency reported. The country has registered more than 5,200 cases of the typhoid fever since 2016, mostly in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/09/24
By: Wu Po-wei, Yeh Su-ping and Frances Huang

Taipei, Sept. 24 (CNA) The Cabinet-level Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee (IGPASC) said Tuesday that it has determined that the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC) is affiliated with the opposition Kuomintang (KMT).

At a meeting that day, the IGPASC issued a ruling indicating that the BCC's assets valued at about NT$7.73 billion (US$249.35 million) were obtained by the KMT in an inappropriate way, and so belong to the state.

As a result, the commission will pursue a transfer of the assets to the state, the IGPASC said.

The assets include 13 parcels of land and buildings, such as the Treasure Palace, a luxury residential apartment block located on Ren'ai Road, Section 3 in downtown Taipei, the IGPASC said.
[FULL  STORY]

DEADLY TRANSFER: The two pilots had a little more than half of the recommended time in flight stimulator training and lacked the ability to handle the emergency

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 25, 2019
By: Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter

The pilots’ lack of training and turbulence contributed to the crash of a National Airborne Service Corps

(NASC) NA-907 helicopter in February last year, a Taiwan Transportation Safety Board (TTSB) investigation has determined.

According to the report released yesterday, the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, which had been deployed to bring a patient from Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) to Taitung on Feb. 5, crashed into the sea about 81 seconds after taking off from Lanyu.

All six people aboard were killed, but four bodies were never recovered.

Debris from the helicopter was later retrieved from a depth of about 1,000m below the surface, but the cockpit and tail have never been found, the report said.    [FULL  STORY]

Behind Taiwan's loss of diplomatic allies, what have China, Australia, and the U.S. each gained or lost over last week's Pacific drama?

The News Lens
Date: 2019/09/23
By: Jonathan Pryke

After a public, protracted, and somewhat torturous process, the government of Solomon Islands last

week decided to sever ties with Taiwan in favor of the People’s Republic of China. Days later, in sharp juxtaposition, Kiribati suddenly broke ties with Taiwan too, catching everyone by surprise. Taiwan’s support from Pacific countries was reduced by one-third in just a few short days, demonstrating China’s resolve to marginalize Taiwan diplomatically.

With their combined population outstripping Taiwan’s remaining supporters in the Pacific more than sevenfold, Kiribati and Solomon Islands are a major prize for China. The sixth and seventh nations to swap allegiance since Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was elected in January 2016 leave Taiwan with just 15 remaining diplomatic allies globally.

For Taiwan, this is a blow, although not a fatal one. Its diplomatic network helps to give it a voice and some legitimacy in multilateral organizations, such as the United Nations, where it is shunned. But the network is largely a symbolic one. No one is under any illusion that if push came to shove these allies could do anything to help Taiwan beyond condemnation of China. A look at UN voting patterns indicates that even support from these allies is not always guaranteed.

Taiwan's Foreign Minister Joseph Wu announces the severance of diplomatic relations with Kiribati on September 20, 2019.

Military ties, particularly with the United States, are far more important for Taiwan’s enduring sovereignty. Some, including the Taiwanese government, argue that China is ramping up pressure on the diplomatic network to sway next January’s closely contested elections. But the aid spending required to maintain Taiwan’s diplomatic network is not popular in Taiwan, and whatever influence it may be having is surely being undone by the unrest in Hong Kong.    [FULL  STORY]