PARTLY TRUE: The foreign ministry admitted that more than twice the estimated number of bungled passports were produced, but said it was under no obligation to pay

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 31, 2017
B:y Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday dismissed an accusation by New Power Party

Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) that it has hidden 550,000 additional copies of its botched passport, but acknowledged that a total of 550,000 copies, instead of 200,000 as previously stated, had been printed.

Ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) made the remarks in a statement yesterday, responding to claims that the total loss from the passport mishap was far more than initial estimates of about NT$300 million (US$10 million), due to the alleged cover-up.

“Until this day, the public has been kept in the dark: Rather than only 200,000 passports, 550,000 more copies of the botched passport were actually printed,” Huang said on Facebook yesterday morning.

He said the ministry was originally scheduled to accept the second batch on Thursday, but canceled it at the last minute after discovering on Tuesday that the new passport — which went into circulation on Monday — contained an image mistakenly based on Washington Dulles International Airport instead of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

Reuters
Date: December 29, 2017
By: Fabian Hamacher

TAOYUAN, Taiwan (Reuters) – Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said on Friday China’s military ambitions are becoming more apparent and tension between Taiwan and the mainland must not be resolved through military force.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen speaks during the end-of-year news conference in Taipei, Taiwan December 29, 2017. REUTERS/Fabian Hamacher
Tsai has faced increasing hostility from China since she won election early last year, with China stepping up military drills around Taiwan.

China suspects Tsai, from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, wants to push for the self-ruled island’s formal independence, a red line for Beijing, which considers Taiwan a wayward province and sacred Chinese territory.    [FULL  STORY]

The exhibition will be held until December 30 at the World Trade Center

Taiwan News 
Date: 2017/12/29
By: Juvina Lai,Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Ministry of Science and Technology organized an Expo which

features a real time computer-animated dance performance, performed by a dancer wearing costumes fitted with electronic sensors.

The 2017 Future Tech Exhibition is being implemented by the Taipei Computer Association and is being showcased from December 28 to December 30 at the Taipei World Trade Center.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/12/29
By: Yeh Su-ping, Elaine Hou and Kuan-lin Liu

Taipei, Dec. 29 (CNA) The Presidential Office denied claims made by a South Korean news

outlet that a Taiwanese company was behind a Hong Kong-registered vessel that secretly transferred oil to a North Korean vessel in October, an action prohibited by the United Nations Security Council’s latest sanctions against Pyongyang.

The Presidential Office addressed a claim made by The Korea Herald on Friday that claimed a Taiwanese company, Billions Bunker Group, chartered a Hong Kong vessel to transfer oil to a North Korean vessel in international waters in a ship-to-ship transfer prohibited by the United Nations Security Council.

Taiwan’s Maritime and Port Bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications later confirmed that the ship used in the oil transfer was registered in Hong Kong and leased by Billions Bunker Group which is registered in the Marshal Islands.

However, reports indicate that U.S. intelligence sources informed the bureau that the owner of that company is a Taiwan national.    [FULL  STORY]

‘BETTER LATE THAN NEVER’: The passage makes Taiwan the first in the world to have such a law, a legislator said, while another said that the nation still trails behind others

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 30, 2017
By: Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

Lawmakers yesterday passed the Act on Financial Technology Innovations and

Experiments (金融科技創新實驗條例) in a bid to upgrade the nation’s financial sector by granting technology firms more leeway when experimenting with innovative financial services.

The act was inspired by a sandbox proposed by the UK Financial Conduct Authority for field-testing financial services by tech firms.

Firms that have passed an assessment to use the sandbox would be allowed to bypass — in part or in full — certain regulations after gaining the approval of the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), the act stipulates.

The FSC is to consult responsible agencies when it wants a test financial service to be exempted from certain rules, with the exception of the Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法) and the Act Against the Threats of Hacking (資恐防治法), which cannot be exempted, it says.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-12-28

The government has no plans to activate the country’s fourth nuclear power plant. That’s

the word from Cabinet spokesperson Hsu Kuo-yung on Thursday.

The plant, located on the New Taipei coast, has never come online. When nearing completion, it was mothballed in July 2015 in response to public opposition to nuclear power. The period for mothballing the plant expires at the end of the year.

Hsu said the state-owned power company Taipower and the economics ministry have met to decide the future of the plant. But Hsu said the plant will never be activated.    [FULL  STORY]

Researchers have listed 45 sites linked to the White Terror era

Taiwan News 
Date: 2017/12/28
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Taiwan’s National Human Rights Museum might use virtual reality

to recreate sites related to the White Terror era if they have already been destroyed or changed, Culture Minister Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said Thursday.

The museum is likely to open next May, but in the meantime, the government has already drawn up a list of 45 locations which played a mostly tragic part in the repression after the 228 Incident in 1947, such as prisons and sites of executions.

At least 10,000 or more than 20,000 people died in the uprising against Kuomintang rule and during its long aftermath, when the government locked up, “disappeared” or executed suspected opponents.

One of the sites, an educational institute in Tucheng, New Taipei City, is now owned by the Ministry of National Defense, Storm Media reported. A relative of a White Terror victim asked the military to hand over the site to the museum.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/12/28
By: Yu Hsiao-han and Shih Hsiu-chuan 

Taipei, Dec. 28 (CNA) The recipients of the Third Yu Ying-shih Humanistic Research Award on Thursday expressed appreciation for the recognition conferred on them and said the prize money would help alleviate the shortage of funds for research in their field.

One of three recipients of the Monographic Book Prize was Lin Hsin-yi (林欣宜), an assistant professor of history at National Taiwan Normal University, whose project is to study the history of Taiwan in the period 1985 as documented by foreign nationals in the country.

Lin said she hoped her work would add to the understanding of history from a new angle.
[FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 29, 2017
By: Lu Yi-hsuan and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Facing imminent recall for approving the design of the nation’s newest passports, whose

inner pages mistakenly feature a depiction of a US airport, Representative to Canada Kung Chung-chen (龔中誠) has protested the decision, saying he did not have the authority to make final decisions on issues regarding passports.

On Tuesday, a netizen posted on Facebook a photograph of a sample passport, saying that the Bureau of Consular Affairs had mistakenly based an illustration on its inner pages on Washington Dulles International Airport instead of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

After acknowledging the mistake, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it would recall passports issued since Monday, when they went into circulation, and would create a new batch without the error.    [FULL  STORY]