Live-fire torpedo exercise comes 13 years after previous firing
Taiwan News
Date: 2020/07/15
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
Chien Lung-class submarine (CNA photo)
The live-fire exercise, which was the first of its kind in 13 years, was part of the 36th annual Han Kuang military exercise, which began Monday (July 13) and will last until Friday (July 17).
[FULL STORY]
Focus Taiwan
Date: 07/15/2020
By: Wu Chia-jung and interns Grace Hu and Meryl Kao
CNA file photo
The biweekly Super Lotto has not had a first-prize winner in 22 weeks, and will next be drawn on Thursday, when the jackpot is likely to be around NT$1.83 billion, the company said.
People placing bets in the Super Lotto and other lottery games are urged to use their stimulus vouchers, which became available Wednesday with a face value of NT$200 and NT$500, the company said.
According to Taiwan Lottery, it is offering special ticket packages priced at NT$200, NT$500, NT$700 and NT$3,000 to encourage buyers to use the vouchers. [FULL STORY]
INTERVENTION: The government’s proposal to increase cash incentives to encourage people to have children runs counter to its response to COVID-19, Chyn Yu-rung said
Taipei Times
Date: Jul 16, 2020
By: Sherry Hsiao / Staff reporter
The Childcare Policy Alliance yesterday urged the government not to increase the monthly cash incentives to encourage couples to have children and to instead use the money to fund the public childcare system.
In the first six months of the year, the nation recorded 79,760 births, the alliance told a news conference in Taipei, citing statistics from the Ministry of the Interior.
The number of newborns in the nation for the whole of this year could fall below 160,000, it added.
One of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) main policy proposals during her re-election campaign was to increase the cash incentive from NT$2,500 per month to NT$5,000 per month, the alliance said. [FULL STIORY]
Radio Taiwan International
Date: 14 July, 2020
By: Paula Chao
In a post on her Facebook page, President Tsai Ing-wen reminded the public to stay alert. (Photo from Tsai’s Facebook)
Tsai made the statement in a post on her Facebook page and through a text message on Tuesday morning, hours before the drill started at 1:30 pm.
The 30-minute air raid drill also aims to test Taiwan’s “Airspace Threat Alert System” in the event of a missile attack to give the public more time to escape to safety. [FULL STORY]
From booksellers to young protesters, people who have fled mainland China’s crackdown in Hong Kong have come to Taiwan for what they thought at first would be a short-term refuge – and is now an evolving community in exile
The Globe And Mail
Date: July 14, 2020
By: Nathan Vanderklippe, Asian Correspondent
Lam Wing-kee, a bookseller from Hong Kong, stands this past January in the office space in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, where he would reopen Causeway Books. His old store in Hong Kong was shut down after he fled the Chinese territory, saying Chinese forces seized and interrogated him for selling politically sensitive books.
NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
The titles on display include those now stripped from libraries and schools in Hong Kong, where Mr. Lam once ran the original Causeway Books, a shop peddling historical tomes and thinly sourced political thrillers to readers thirsty for knowledge and gossip about China’s top leadership. But in 2015, he vanished, reappearing only many months later saying that he was seized by Chinese forces and brutally interrogated.
He left for Taiwan in the midst of last year’s Hong Kong protests against rising Chinese influence, sparked by a proposed extradition bill that if passed, he feared, could be used to return him to China’s justice system. His new Taipei location opened less than a month before Chinese authorities said they would impose a new security law on Hong Kong, creating a punitive new legal regime in his home city that has taken books off shelves there, and cemented his decision to flee to a democratic island.
The transplanting of Mr. Lam’s life and work to Taiwan is a striking illustration of the changes under way in Hong Kong, a city that was itself until recently considered a place of refuge for people escaping authoritarian China. [FULL STORY]
Yang's father died last year due to no one present to perform CPR
Taiwan News
Date: 2020/07/14
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer
(Facebook, 我愛鹿港小鎮臉書社團 photo)
Soong Ming-zhe (宋明哲), a member of the Changhua County Fire Bureau's Puyan Branch, told media on Tuesday that the branch responded to a report on Monday afternoon that a woman surnamed Cheng (鄭) appeared to be having a heart attack in front of a house on Lukang's Yongning Street, per CNA. [FULL STORY]
Focus Taiwan
Date: 07/14/2020
By: Emerson Lim
The Taiwanese-controlled Taiping Island in the South China Sea. CNA file photo
"Our country opposes attempts to resolve South China Sea disputes by means of threats, coercion and force," MOFA spokesperson Joanne Ou (歐江安) said at a regular press briefing that day.
She was responding to media questions regarding a press release titled "U.S. Position on Maritime Claims in the South China Sea," issued by Pompeo on Monday.
In the press release, Pompeo said "Beijing uses intimidation to undermine the sovereign rights of Southeast Asian coastal states in the South China Sea, bully them out of offshore resources, assert unilateral dominion." [FULL STORY]
WHITE PAPER: The Japanese Ministry of Defense said it is monitoring the military buildup on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but the PLA has significant advantages
Taipei Times
Date: Jul 15, 2020
By: Staff writer, with CNA, TOKYO
The military balance in the Taiwan Strait is tilting in China’s favor, and the gap is widening as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) modernizes its arsenal, an annual defense white paper released by the Japanese Ministry of Defense yesterday said.
Defense of Japan 2020 says that “the overall military balance between China and Taiwan is shifting in favor of China, and the gap appears to be growing year by year,” in its section on China’s relations with foreign countries and regions.
China has been building and modernizing the PLA at an unprecedented rate, while Taiwan relies heavily on US arms sales, the paper said.
“While the United States has continued and reinforced its engagement in Taiwan, China has repeatedly expressed its strong protest against Taiwan’s independence,” it said.
[FULL STORY]
Radio Taiwan International
Date: 13 July, 2020
By: Katherine Wei
Taiwan’s flag is not on the German Federal Foreign Office’s website
A German reporter asked about the omission during a foreign office press conference in Berlin last Friday. The Deputy Spokesperson responded by saying that Taiwan is not a country that Germany recognizes.
In response, a spokesperson for Taiwan’s foreign ministry, Joanne Ou, said refusing to show Taiwan's flag is unacceptable. She says that the foreign ministry has ordered Taiwan’s representative office in Berlin to communicate with the Federal Foreign Office.
[FULL STORY]
South Chins Morning Post
Date: 13 Jul, 2020
By: Kristin Huang
A US surveillance aircraft passed close to China’s southern province of Guangdong in a rare operation believed to be designed to monitor any military activity along the coast.
The E-8C was spotted around 110km (68 miles) from the coast, according to an image published on Twitter by the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, a Peking University think tank.
The flight coincided with Taiwan’s largest annual military exercise, the Han Kuang, which started on Monday.
For the first time, the exercise featured Taiwan’s newly formed combined arms battalions and also involved cooperative special forces operations, torpedo target practice and live-fire drills involving reserve units. [FULL STORY]
