8 unaccounted for Indonesian migrant workers arrested in taxi in Taoyuan City

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/27
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Eight unaccounted for Indonesian migrant workers have been detained for the past week after being arrested in a taxi by police in northern Taiwan on Jan. 19, reported CNA.

During a routine road block, Taoyuan City police spotted eight Indonesian workers acting suspiciously in a taxi. After determining their identities, police discovered that they were on a wanted list for leaving their employers.

Taoyuan police officer Lin Wu-chieh (林武傑) said that while conducting spot checks at 11:30 p.m. on Jan. 19, they spotted a taxi with many foreign migrant workers inside. When the foreign female migrant workers inside the cab saw police, they immediately appeared to try to duck down and conceal themselves.

Police immediately noticed that the passengers were acting suspicious and directed patrol cars to immediately intercept the vehicle. Lin said a total of eight Indonesian nationals were inside the taxi, including six men and two women.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/01/27
By: Su Mu-chun, Hau Hue-chin and Flor Wang

Taipei, Jan. 27 (CNA) Shen Jhih-hwei (沈智慧) of the Kuomintang (KMT) won the legislative by-election in Taichung’s fifth electoral district Sunday in a race in which barely a quarter of eligible voters cast ballots, according to the Taichung Election Commission.

She will fill the vacancy left by Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) of the KMT, who resigned her position as a legislator on Nov. 20, 2018 before winning her bid for mayor four days later.

Shen garnered 49,230 votes, or 57.8 percent of the valid votes cast, beating out Wang Yi-chuan (王義川) of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, who received 32,903 votes.
[FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 27, 2019
By: Lee I-chia  /  Staff reporter

A two-year-old child was the first person this year to experience serious complications

due to an enterovirus infection, the Taipei Department of Health said on Friday, urging people to take precautions amid heightened enterovirus activity.

The department said the child and was immediately hospitalized after seeking treatment for a fever and an oral ulcer on Jan. 4.

On Jan. 6, the child was not walking steadily, was sleepy, was experiencing involuntary twitching of the muscles and had a rapid heart rate, so was admitted to an intensive care unit, the department said.

The Centers for Disease Control confirmed that the child was diagnosed with Coxsackievirus A10, but has now recovered and has been discharged from hospital.
[FULL  STORY]

It wants to become an indigestible “porcupine”

The Economist
Date: Jan 26th 2019

Taiwan “must and will” be reunited with the mainland, declared Xi Jinping, China’s president, on January 2nd. Chinese leaders have been saying such things since the retreating Nationalists separated the island from the rest of the country after losing the civil war to the Communists in 1949. But Mr Xi has done more than just talk: he has sent bombers and warships to circle the island, held live-fire drills in the narrow Taiwan Strait and, Taiwanese generals say, instructed the People’s Liberation Army (pla) to be capable of seizing Taiwan by force by next year. Back in 1996, the most recent cross-strait crisis, China’s military spending was barely twice Taiwan’s. Now it is 15 times greater. That has left Taiwanese leaders rushing to rethink their defences.    [FULL  STORY]

A Kaohsiung graduate student nicknamed GT, went to Shanghai earlier in January to join an art project headed by Chinese artist Wu Laobai

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/26
By:  Central News Agency

TAIPEI (CNA) — A Taiwanese volunteer who went to China recently to campaign against its sexual orientation therapies sees the LGBT communities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait as facing similar challenges.

The Taiwanese volunteer, a Kaohsiung graduate student nicknamed GT, went to Shanghai earlier in January to participate in “Lovers,” a performance art project headed by Chinese artist Wu Laobai (武老白) to oppose therapies in China that “convert” sexual orientations.

Homosexuality stopped being broadly defined as a disease in China in 2001 with the publication of the third edition of the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders (CCMD), an official report published by the Chinese Medical Association.

But GT said the report retained a purported illness called “the disorder of sexual orientation,” and medical institutes in China still perform so-called sexual orientation conversion therapies.   [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/01/26
By: Chiu Chun-chin and Frances Huang

Taipei, Jan. 26 (CNA) A Chinese tourist who was caught Saturday attempting to bring pork jerky and other meat products into Taiwan paid a heavy fine to avoid being denied entry into the country, quarantine authorities said.

The Chinese visitor surnamed Zhou, who was traveling with four of his family members from Shanghai to Taiwan, attempted to bring in pork jerky and fish sausages into Taiwan when they arrived at Taoyuan International Airport around Saturday at noon.

Under new rules imposed to keep African swine fever (ASF) out of Taiwan that took effect Friday, foreign visitors caught bringing pork products into Taiwan are to be denied entry if they fail to pay a fine of NT$200,000 (US$6,494).

Zhou was the first foreign national to pay a fine to enter Taiwan since the more restrictive rules were implemented Friday.    [FULL  STORY]

WHO TO TRUST? Users should be careful because companies, including Huawei, are constantly uploading information to their servers, expert Lin Hsin-hsu said

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 27, 2019
By: Jake Chung  /  Staff writer, with CNA

A digital expert on Friday urged people to regularly change their passwords or security

patterns on their cellphones, computers and tablets to better protect their information.

The warning came amid concern that telecommunications equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) allegedly contains “backdoors” that could allow the Chinese military to conduct espionage.

Varying degrees of bans on Huawei products exist in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, while Taiwan in 2013 banned the use of core telecoms equipment manufactured by Chinese companies.

The Industrial Technology Research Institute and the Institute of Information Industry have announced that their internal networks do not support Huawei phones or computers
[FULL  STORY]

The US Navy has sent vessels through the Strait on four occasions since July 2018.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/01/25
By: Nick Aspinwall

CNN reported on Thursday that the U.S. Navy sailed two warships through the contentious Taiwan Strait, while Taiwan’s defense ministry said China flew multiple military aircraft close to the island’s southern tip for a training exercise on the same day.

The guided missile destroyer USS McCampbell and USNS Walter S. Diehl sailed through the Strait in what U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Tim Gorman told CNN was a “routine Taiwan Strait transit” that was “in accordance with international law.”

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense confirmed the move later on Thursday, according to CNA. The defense ministry offered no further comment aside from saying Taiwan’s military is in control of the situation.

The U.S. Navy sailed vessels through the Taiwan Strait last July before sending surface combatants through the Strait in October and November. Beijing responded to the latter two passages by sending multiple Chinese warships into the area.    [FULL  STORY]

The owner is likely to have violated Article 25 of the Animal Protection Law

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/25
By: Ryan Drillsma, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Outrage was sparked following an incident in Keelung (基隆) on Wednesday, when a stray dog was killed by a pet pit bull terrier.

A Facebook user posted a message in a Keelung daily news Facebook group, including pictures, that claimed a pit bull owner had allowed his pet to attack a stray dog. Despite efforts from local residents to drive the pit bull away using sticks and scooter helmets, it continued to attack until the stray eventually died from blood loss, he wrote.

The story has been picked up by multiple Chinese-language news outlets. A number of violent incidents involving pit bull terriers attacking people have hit headlines over recent years, bringing society to question whether Taiwan ought to follow in the footsteps of other countries and ban or restrict ownership of the dog breed.

The author of the post claimed this was not the first time the owner had let his dog out of sight. He noted that the owner had already been punished for a similar incident, and claimed he purposely allowed his dog to kill the stray.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/01/25
By: Miao Chung-han and Flor Wang

Taipei, Jan. 25 (CNA) Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜), the wife of jailed Taiwanese democracy advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲), has again been denied approval to visit her husband in the Hunan province prison in which he is being held, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) confirmed Friday.

“Lee’s application to visit her husband was again recently rejected by prison authorities without an explanation,” SEF spokeswoman Kuan An-lu (管安露) said.

Kuan suggested that the prison may have turned down Lee’s request to visit her husband earlier this month because of the heavy traffic expected in China ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday.

But she urged the Chinese side to fully protect the rights of the imprisoned person and his family and said the SEF will continue to help his family members relay their concerns to Chishan Prison.    [FULL  STORY]