Radio Taiwan International
Date: 01 September, 2020
By: Shirley Lin

Prague Mayor Zdeněk Hřib on Monday confirmed that Taipei and Prague will launch direct flights between the sister cities. He said that would take place once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. Hřib is visiting Taiwan with the 89-person Czech delegation headed by Senate President Miloš Vystrčil.

The Czech mayor said that he has held talks with representatives of Taiwan’s national airline, China Airlines, about opening up direct flights between the two cities.    [FULL  STORY]

EuroNews
Date:  01/09/2020
By: David Hutt

If the Czech Republic’s relations with China had been fraying over the past 12 months, they have now hit a new low after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reacted furiously to a leading Czech politician’s visit to Taiwan.

Speaking during a state visit to Germany, Wang said that Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil’s arrival in Taipei this week, the highest-level meeting between Czech and Taiwanese officials to date, is “an act of international treachery”.

He added that Beijing “won’t take a laissez-faire attitude or sit idly by, and will make [Vystrcil] pay a heavy price for his short-sighted behaviour and political opportunism".

Whether this escalates beyond accusatory words between Prague and Beijing is unclear at this stage, but it comes as the Czech Republic undergoes a profound questioning of its foreign policy interests.    [FULL  STORY]

Failure to improve labeling will meet with high fines, though government will provide stickers

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/09/01
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said on Tuesday (Sept. 1) that restaurants that fail to use stickers or signs to display the place of origin for ground meat can be punished by a maximum fine of NT$3 million (US$1.2 million).

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) recently announced that the country will set an allowable level of ractopamine (10ppb) for imported pork and open its market to U.S. pork and beef from animals over 30 months old. The policy is set to be implemented on Jan. 1, 2021, according to CNA.

To be in line with the upcoming policy, Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration recently announced a barrage of new signage regulations, such as requiring restaurants to indicate the country of slaughter for pork as well as for all packaged meat.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 09/01/2020
By: William Yen and CNA intern Meryl Kao

Taipei, Sept. 1 (CNA) A coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that fight for the rights of migrant workers rallied in Taipei Tuesday outside an annual international workshop on combating human trafficking.

The protesters were demanding that the government improve the rights of migrant fishermen following alleged abuses aboard Taiwanese deep sea fishing vessels.

Representatives from some four NGOs, gathered outside Taipei's Chang Yung-Fa Foundation International Convention Center, where the 2020 International Workshop on Combating Human Trafficking was being held, to urge the government to stop allowing Taiwanese deep sea vessels from sailing under flags of convenience and to include its migrant fishermen into Taiwan's labor laws.

A flag of convenience is a practice in which a vessel registers and flies a flag other than that of the country of the shipowner to save costs on tax and other fiscal incentives.   [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 02, 2020
By: Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

The police yesterday began a program targeting drivers who fail to stop amid a rise in pedestrian deaths at intersections over the past few years.

The one-month campaign to enhance transportation safety at key intersections nationwide was launched by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) and the Ministry of the Interior (MOI).

Statistics from the transportation ministry showed that 2,865 people died within 30 days after being in a traffic accident last year, up from 2,780 in 2018, MOTC Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) told a news conference in the Ximending (西門町) area’s 6th Square (6號廣場) in Taipei.

Sixty percent of those killed were involved in accidents at intersections, Lin said. 
[FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 31 August, 2020
By: Katherine Wei

Health Minister Chen Shih-chung says that relaxing Taiwan’s policy on the import of US meat products will help Taiwan in future international negotiations. Chen was speaking during a radio interview Monday.

On Friday, President Tsai Ing-wen announced that Taiwan will be lifting restrictions for importing pork with ractopamine residue and opening the market to US beef from cattle aged 30 months and older. This is a major reversal of Tsai and the Democratic Progressive Party’s longtime stance on not importing meat containing traces of ractopamine, a controversial leanness-promoting additive to pig feed.      [FULL  STORY]

Foreign Policy Research Institute
Date:  September 1, 2020
By: Thomas J. Shattuck

(FPRI) — Over the past two months, the very public rivalry between China and Taiwan has moved into the Horn of Africa over representation in unrecognized Somaliland. On July 1, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it had signed a deal with Somaliland to establish reciprocal representative offices to foster greater cooperation in “agriculture, education, energy, fisheries, health, information and communications, and mining.” The opening of offices and the exchange of diplomatic staff were delayed by COVID-19 restrictions—with the Somaliland office in Taipei scheduled to be opened in September 2020—even though talks between the two sides had been going on for months prior to the July announcement.

On August 17, the “Taiwan Representative Office” opened in Hargeisa. President Tsai Ing-wen recorded a video to mark the occasion; the opening ceremony was attended by Somaliland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Yasin Hagi Mohamoud. This office is the only one of Taiwan’s that uses “Taiwan” in the official office name, instead of Taipei (generally for offices in countries that it does not have formal relations) or Republic of China (generally for offices in countries that it maintains formal diplomatic relations with). For outside observers, the use of “Taiwan” in a diplomatic office might not seem like that big of a deal, but considering that it is the only instance that the country’s unofficial, but widely used, name appears, it should be viewed as a win—especially since in international fora Taiwan is often forced to use “Chinese Taipei” to have a chance at a seat.

Forming unofficial—and potentially official ties—with Somaliland offers Taiwan a chance to showcase what it has to offer to other countries, particularly smaller, marginalized states. It will also open up new opportunities regionally that may not have existed and shows that Taiwan will not sit idly by as Beijing seeks to further isolate it.

On the face of it, this budding relationship between two unrecognized states shouldn’t be big news. While Taiwan regularly punches above its weight in a variety of areas (most recently COVID-19), Somaliland does not yet have the “unofficial legitimacy” of Taiwan, in which larger countries regularly cooperate and support it despite not having official diplomatic ties. Nevertheless, events that occurred between the July 1 announcement and the August 17 ceremony are instructive in at least one important way: how Beijing tried to stop it.
[FULL  STORY]

Tsai administration this month announced it would increase Taiwan’s defense budget by 10 percent this year

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/08/31
By: Eric Chang, Taiwan News, Contributing Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan has been making moves to revamp its military in the face of increased military threats and posturing from China.

Talking to the New York Times, Wang Ting-yu (王定宇), a member of the legislature’s foreign affairs and defense committee, said, “I have to be honest: Taiwan’s military needs to improve a lot.” Chinese fighter jets and warships have repeatedly entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) and territorial waters in recent months.

In response, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has forged ahead with military changes. She has moved to strengthen Taiwan’s reserves, a force that would be critical to defending the country in the event of a Chinese invasion.

The Tsai administration this month announced that it would increase Taiwan’s defense budget by 10 percent this year, in addition to a five percent increase in 2019. That would raise military spending to more than two percent of gross domestic product, according to the New York Times.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 08/31/2020
By: Lee Hsien-feng, Wang Chen-chung
and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Aug. 31 (CNA) The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) is urging local governments to act in unison against the government's decision to lift a ban on imports of pork containing traces of a controversial veterinary drug.

KMT caucuses in all 22 city and county councils in Taiwan held press conferences simultaneously Monday to express with one voice their opposition to the new policy of setting maximum residue levels for ractopamine in imported pork.

They were responding to an announcement by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Friday that her administration will set maximum residue levels (MRL) for ractopamine in pork to allow imports of such pork from the United States to pave the way for a trade deal with Washington.

At a KMT press conference in Taitung, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said the party was opposed to U.S. pork containing ractopamine because of potential health concerns and criticized Tsai for not seeking a public consensus before announcing the move. 
[FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 01, 2020
By: Lee I-chia / Staff reporter

The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said that the number of suicides of young people in the city has grown rapidly in the past two years, adding that mental health issues are the main reasons for suicidal behavior.

Last year, 339 people died from suicide in the city, a decline of 10 people from 2018, the department said, citing Ministry of Health and Welfare data.

However, the number of deaths from suicide among people aged 15 to 24 increased from 17 to 28, or by 64.7 percent, showing that suicide prevention measures for the age group needs immediate attention, it said.

The Taipei City Government yesterday held a news conference and set up an interactive display booth at Taipei City Hall to raise public awareness about suicide prevention.   [FULL  STORY]