MOONLIGHTING: Control Yuan members said the NTU president had applied for approval for some jobs, but not others, which showed that he understood the rules

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 15, 2019
By: Ann Maxon  /  Staff reporter

National Taiwan University (NTU) president Kuan Chun-ming (管中閔) received about

NT$16 million (US$518,925) for illegally working part-time while serving as an Academia Sinica research fellow, NTU professor and minister without portfolio between 2002 and 2015, the Control Yuan said yesterday.

According to NTU regulations, teachers who accept outside jobs without the school’s approval could be fired, suspended, denied a contract renewal or deprived of certain benefits as a punishment, Control Yuan member Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲) told a news conference in Taipei.

The Control Yuan on Jan. 15 voted seven to four to impeach Kuan after an investigation found that he had received NT$50,000 per month for seven years for writing for a column in the Chinese-

language Next Magazine while serving as a minister.    [FULL  STORY]

Don’t blame them for exporting an arguably superior way of eating.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/02/13
By: Wolfgang Georg Arlt

A little more than 200 years ago, in January 1817, one of the greatest banquets in the history of Europe took place in the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, on the occasion of the visit of the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia to George, the Prince Regent (later George IV, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover).

The 120 dishes were not served as was usual in Western Europe up till then à la française, which meant that all the dishes were placed on the table at the same time and people helped themselves from the dishes nearest to them. Instead, for the banquet given by the Regent for the Russian Grand Duke, in order to honor his guest and to make sure that everyone had a chance to taste all the dishes, the serving style was à la russe, meaning that each guest was served a portion of each dish on a separate plate or in a separate bowl, one after the other. The place setting for each guest included a service plate, all the necessary cutlery except those required for dessert, and stemmed glasses for water, wines and champagne.

Credit: SuppliedEuropeans ate like this too… until an 1817 banquet mucked it all up.
If that sounds familiar, it is because this is what is nowadays considered to be the ‘normal’ way of eating in Western countries. The spread of this habit across Western Europe – and the British colonies – was supported by the growth of an affluent urban population and the general acceptance of using a knife and fork in the early nineteenth century. The rural population, which had mostly survived on bread and pottage eaten with a wooden spoon from a common pot in Europe over many centuries, followed suit when people started to be able to afford a more varied diet as well as cutlery.   [FULL  STORY]

Philip Davidson made the comment in a testimony before a Senate committee Tuesday

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/02/13
By: Ryan Drillsma, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson expressed concern Tuesday over the presence of Chinese naval forces in the Taiwan Strait, and Beijing’s reluctance to renounce the use of force in potential unification procedures.

Davidson also stated China’s “One County, Two Systems” proposal does not reflect the wishes of both sides.

The admiral made the comments in a testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, CNA reports.

Davidson expressed the U.S. and Taiwan share the common values of freedom, democracy and the liberal economy, and respect for human rights and the rule of law. He reaffirmed that the U.S. maintains solid, unofficial support for Taiwan in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act and the Three Communiques signed between the U.S. and China.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/13
By: Stanley Cheung and Flor Wang

Taipei, Feb. 13 (CNA) Taiwan welcomes a plan by Hong Kong to amend its extradition rules so that the territory can cooperate with other countries or areas on a case-by-case basis, a government official said Wednesday.

Tsai Chiu-ming (蔡秋明), head of the Department of International and Cross-Strait Legal Affairs under the Ministry of Justice, said Taiwan welcomes closer cooperation with other jurisdictions to combat cross-border crime, and he is glad to see Hong Kong’s planned legislation.

Tsai made the remarks in the wake of a report Tuesday that Hong Kong’s Security Bureau has proposed to the Legislative Council that current rules on extradition be amended to facilitate two-way cooperation with countries or areas with which the territory has not inked extradition treaties.

In line with the bureau’s statement, the plan was motivated by a case in which a Hong Kong woman was allegedly murdered by her boyfriend in Taiwan.    [FULL  STORY]

How Does Taiwan Really Feel About LGBT Issues After Its Referendums?

The News Lens
Date: 2019/02/12
By: By Timothy S. Rich, Andi Dahmer and Isabel Eliassen, Taiwan Insight

If 2017 saw the rise of marriage equality in Taiwan, then the backlash in 2018 suggests many observers held an overly optimistic view on just how much Taiwanese public opinion had shifted. With the March 2017 Constitutional Court deeming the existing civil code that limited marriage to heterosexual couples as unconstitutional, the expectation was that legislative action would soon follow. Yet, despite the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) controlling the legislature and holding the presidency, no meaningful effort was made to push legalization through. Meanwhile, in roughly 18 months, public opinion polls shifted from a majority in Taiwan supporting legalization to a majority opposing it. The results of five referendums in the 2018 local election further indicated a shift in public opinion, suggesting that claims of Taiwan’s broader embrace of liberal ideas were less accurate than previously predicted.

So what happened? After all, the Taiwan Social Change Surveys of 2012 and 2015 found a slight majority of Taiwanese in support of legalization, with marginal differences between supporters of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the DPP. Most other surveys prior to the Constitutional Court decision found similar results. Yet the results of the five referendums related to LGBT issues in November were unambiguous, with Number 10 the clearest: 72.5 percent agreed that the Civil Code should remain restricted to heterosexual couples.

One common argument is that conservative groups effectively organized opposition against legalization similar to that seen previously in the United States, which took off shortly before Taiwan’s Constitutional Court decision. However, this explanation undervalues the extent to which voters in Taiwan had fixed positions on issues like same-sex marriage, as many remained indifferent or had weak preferences at best. If positions on same-sex marriage were fixed, either supporting or opposing, then not only would we not have seen such dramatic changes in polling results, but conservative groups would have had to rely primarily on mobilizing turnout.    [FULL  STORY]

Zero population growth to arrive in 2020 or 2027

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/02/12
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – By 2026, Taiwan will become a super-aged society where at least 20 percent of the population are 65 or older, the National Development Council said Tuesday.

The island nation only entered the “aged society” era last year by recording 10 percent of aged people, the Liberty Times reported.

Looking even further away, the group of people 65 or older will take up 40 percent of the population around the year 2065, which means there will be one elderly person for each 1.2 person of childbearing age, a proportion which stood at one to five just last year.

Taiwan’s evolution looked similar to the situation in Singapore and South Korea, though the aging process ran faster than in Japan, which would still need 11 years before it reached the super-aged phase, the Liberty Times reported. The United States would only enter that period 15 years from now, France 29 years and Great Britain 51 years into the future, according to official data.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/12
By: Joseph Yeh

Taipei, Feb. 12 (CNA) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Tuesday expressed its grave concern and regret to the Philippines after Manila deported seven Taiwanese fraud suspects to China that morning.

It was the second time in less than a year that the Philippines had sent Taiwanese nationals to China despite urgings from Taipei not to do so.

MOFA deputy spokesperson Joanne Ou (歐江安) said Taiwan had repeatedly called on the Philippines since the suspects were arrested in October 2018 to respect their wishes and honor the nationality principle by deporting them back to Taiwan.

Under strong pressure from Beijing, however, Manila ultimately decided to deport the Taiwanese nationals to the other side of the Taiwan Strait.    [FULL STORY]

GIVE AND TAKE? A union leader said that it has made concessions, but has made additional proposals due to China Airlines’ refusal to improve working conditions

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 13, 2019
By: Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter

The Taoyuan Union of Pilots yesterday offered to hold eight-hour negotiations beginning

at 1am today, as it announced plans for a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in Taipei in support of striking China Airlines pilots, whose strike enters its sixth day today.

No timeframe was given for the sit-in.

While the ministry and the airline agreed to meet with union representatives, China Airlines said that the union’s proposed start time for the talks was unfair, as it appeared to be an effort to avoid a media presence, even though the negotiations are to be broadcast live over the Internet.

The carrier said that it had agreed to deploy three pilots for flights that exceed eight hours and four pilots for flights that exceed 12 hours, thereby meeting the union’s main terms for resolving the problem of pilot fatigue.    [FULL  STORY]

A daily breakdown of Taiwan’s top stories and why they matter.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/02/11
By: TNL Daily News

Taiwan’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) has offered a compromise to the Taoyuan Union of Pilots in a pilots’ strike which enters its fourth day today.

Meanwhile, about 200 employees of China Airlines protested the strike on Sunday and questioned the role of union chairwoman Lee Hsin-yen (李信燕), who is a pilot for EVA Airways.

The strike kicked off on Friday over concerns of long working hours and employee fatigue, causing flight cancellations and delays to the dismay of frustrated passengers.

Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材), deputy minister of transportation and communications, said Saturday the ministry had proposed the union and airline jointly review the need for three pilots on flights between six and eight hours. The union has said three pilots should be dispatched onto flights of over seven hours, while the airline maintains the limit should be set at eight hours.    [FULL  STORY]