Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/12/28
By: Chen Chun-hua and Ko Lin 

Taipei, Dec. 28 (CNA) International parcels containing quarantined items such as meat products from certain areas will now be returned, confiscated or destroyed, following the passage of a new amendment by the Legislative Yuan on Friday.

The revision was made to Article 34 of the Statute for Prevention and Control of Infectious Animal Disease, which previously only applied to products being brought into the country by importers or agents requiring animal quarantine certificates from the exporting countries.

It made no mention of items subject to quarantine that were ordered online and brought in by postal or courier services.

The new amendment stipulates that international parcels containing meat products from disease-affected areas will now be returned, confiscated or destroyed.
[FULL  STORY]

UNAWARE: Yu remembers going 82kph about 1km from Sinma, his lawyers said, without explaining his attempts to brake because audio records have not been released

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 29, 2018
By: Staff writer, with CNA

Lawyers representing Yu Chen-chung (尤振仲), conductor of Puyuma Express train

No. 6432 that derailed on Oct. 21 in Yilan County, yesterday said that Yu rejected the government’s claim that his negligence caused the train to speed, which in turn caused the deadly incident.

Yu said that there are differences between his account and two reports released by an Executive Yuan investigative task force last month and earlier this month, which said that a series of mechanical malfunctions on the train and poor troubleshooting by the conductor and the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) dispatch control room were to blame for the derailment near Sinma Station (新馬) that killed 18 people and injured 273.

“I do not accept the charge that human negligence caused the train to speed,” a statement issued by Yu through his lawyers read, after the driver was advised by a doctor to avoid further public exposure.

This month’s report said that Yu because of power problems turned off the automatic train protection (ATP) system that prevents the train from speeding after it left Dasi Train Station (大溪), 44km north of Sinma.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan English News
Date: December 27, 2018 
By: Phillip Charlier 
A bus driver was charged with professional negligence today after a scooter rider was killed on the Alishan Highway this morning, December 27.

At around 9:30am, Mr Zhang, 41, was driving a tour bus carrying Chinese tourists on the way to Mt Ali when he crossed the center line to overtake another vehicle, and slammed into a scooter traveling in the opposite direction.

The scooter rider, a 23-year-old university student name Zhou, was killed instantly by the high-speed impact.

Mr Zhou had rented the scooter to ride to Mt Ali to see the sunrise, and was on his way back to Chiayi City at the time of the crash.    [FULL  STORY]

8 missing Vietnamese tourists nabbed, women suspected as working as prostitutes in Kaohsiung’s ‘Shark Fin Brothel’

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/12/27
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Eight of the 152 Vietnamese tourists who went missing late last week were arrested by authorities, while four others have been accounted for, leaving 140 yet to be found, according to the National Immigration Agency (NIA).

Since news broke that 152 Vietnamese tourists had gone missing from the four tour groups they had originally arrived to Taiwan with on Tuesday, the NIA has captured eight of the travelers in Hsinchu County, Chiayi County, Changhua County, Kaohsiung County, and Taoyuan County, reported Liberty Times. The rogue tourists who have been arrested include five men and three women, the latter of whom turned themselves in to authorities.

In addition, reports have surfaced that some of the Vietnamese women who fled from the tour groups have been sent to hide and work in Kaohsiung’s notorious prostitution den the “Shark’s Fin Brothel” (魚翅樓), so named because the top floor has a shark fin restaurant. Upon obtaining this information, the NIA said that it considers it of great importance and will conduct an investigation with the competent police precinct.

A netizen on the Taiwanese online forum PTT revealed that a friend recently visited the infamous brothel, and for the price of NT$1,600 (US$52), he received the services of a newly arrived Vietnamese sex worker. During a chat with the woman, she said that she had just gotten off the plane a few days ago and she had been taken to work in Kaohsiung.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/12/27
By: Chang Ming-shuan and Flor Wang

Taipei, Dec. 27 (CNA) Taiwan’s circadian clock for cancer has continued to run

faster, with 676 more people diagnosed in 2016 over 2015, colon cancer being the most common form, the Health Promotion Administration said Thursday.

According to a report issued by the administration, a total of 105,832 people were diagnosed with various types of cancer in 2016, which means that there was a new cancer case every four minutes and 58 seconds — shortened from every five minutes in 2015.

In 2016, the median age for a cancer diagnosis was 63 years, the same as the previous year, the report said.

Colon cancer continued to be the cancer affecting the highest number of Taiwanese people for the 11th consecutive year, followed by lung cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer and oral cancer.    [FULL  STORY]

0INE PLOY: The Taipei Animal Protection Office’s Wu Ching-an said that some people were baiting others into offering illegal services to get reward money

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 28, 2018
By: Shen Pei-yao and Sherry Hsiao  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

People can be fined NT$100,000 to NT$3 million (US$3,247 to US$97,396) for

offering boarding services for pets without a permit, the Taipei Animal Protection Office said yesterday.

Only licensed businesses with permits from local authorities are allowed to breed, trade or offer board for animals, it said, citing Article 22 of the Animal Protection Act (動物保護法).

The office carries out regular inspections on popular pet-trading Web sites or fan pages to check that vendors using them have provided license numbers, said Wu Ching-an (吳晉安), the head of the office’s animal rescue team, adding that only legal vendors with permit numbers may engage in the pet trade.

This year, of the 155 cases of dog or cat breeding, trading or boarding services offered online that the office inspected, five — three cases of trading and two cases of boarding without a permit — were found to contravene provisions of the act, the office said, adding that fines in the cases had a combined total of NT$450,000.
[FULL  STORY]

‘Despite increasing diplomatic pressure from the CCP, long-term trends remain in favor of Taiwan maintaining its de facto independence.’

The News Lewns
Date: 2018/12/26
By: Sheryn Lee, Macquarie University

The confluence of Taiwan’s domestic politics and cross-Strait relations remains complex. Local dissatisfaction with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)’s administration resulted in low popularity and major losses for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the November 2018 ‘9 in 1’ local elections. But the continued strength of Taiwanese civil society and its participation in elections reflects Taiwan’s consolidated democracy – a trend that is accelerating China’s diplomatic pressure on Taipei. Meanwhile, U.S.–Taiwan relations are advancing and Taipei is strengthening its regional ties.

President Tsai is successfully pushing forward reforms to restructure Taiwan’s economy in response to an aging society and increasing economic and technological competition with China. Taiwan had its best economic growth rate in years in the first quarter of 2018, reaching 3 percent.

Still, Taiwanese civil society remains dissatisfied. In March, Tsai’s DPP introduced amendments to the Labor Standards Act with the aim to make seven Taiwanese industries more competitive against their Chinese counterparts. The amendments angered Taiwanese unions by reducing mandatory days off and increasing allowable overtime. Although President Tsai also raised the monthly minimum wage by 10 percent and public servant pay by 3 percent in May, the government was still met with protests for higher wages.    [FULL  STORY]

Japanese media had launched the report of a successful test firing

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/12/26
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Ministry of National Defense on Wednesday afternoon strongly denied media reports originating in Japan saying that China had successfully test fired a Russian-made S400 missile in the Taiwan Strait.

The media had failed to do the proper research and had just published “fake news,” making the public feel uneasy and uncomfortable, the Liberty Times quoted the ministry as saying.

Taiwan’s military said it kept an extremely close look at Chinese military movements and operations in the area, both in the air and on land. It called on the media to check sources and information for believability, and not to report untrue information which had the potential to sow public concern.

Japan’s Kyodo news agency had reported that the S400 Triumf, which China procured from Russia in 2014, flew at a speed of 3 kilometer per second and hit its intended target in the Taiwan Strait after a flight of 250 km. There was no mention of when and which part of the area exactly the test firing had supposedly taken place.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/12/26
By: Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, Dec. 26 (CNA) Taiwanese travel agencies have fallen victim to inadequate government reviews of visa applications and poor law enforcement in cases of tourist runaways, industry representatives said Wednesday after 152 Vietnamese tourists went missing upon entering Taiwan.

Ringo Lee (李奇嶽), head of the Travel Agent Association of the ROC, said the government should tighten its tourism code to curb illegal immigration through package tours and come up with effective measures when serious situations occur.

“Local travel agencies are victims themselves in cases like this because they have no authority to control their customers,” Lee said, referring to the largest-ever case of tourists deliberately leaving their tours under a special program launched in November 2015.

That program made it easier for citizens of Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, India and Brunei to visit Taiwan, in part through waivers of visa fees for groups of at least five tourists from the six countries, as long as they were organized by Tourism Bureau-designated “quality travel agencies” or part of company-sponsored groups.    [FULL  STORY]