Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-23
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Taiwanese members of a fraud ring who were

recently deported from Kenya to China were unlikely to be transferred to Taiwan soon, Premier Simon Chang said Saturday after the return of a judiciary delegation from Beijing.

The group, headed by a Ministry of Justice official, said China had agreed that Taiwan could join in the investigation, but the 45 Taiwanese held in the communist country would not be coming home any time soon.

In practice, there was a very low possibility that they could return to Taiwan immediately, but the government will work hard to see that their basic rights are respected, Chang told reporters. He pointed out that the delegation had succeeded in getting approval to talk to the suspects and that relatives would be allowed to travel to China to meet them.

The premier said he could understand that China was wary that the suspects would receive too lenient sentences if they went to court in Taiwan.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/23
By: Chen Wei-ting, Wang Shu-fen and Lilian Wu

Taipei, April 23 (CNA) The number of imported dengue fever cases has reached

89 this year, setting a new high during the same period in the past few years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said Saturday, urging the public to be on guard against the mosquito-borne disease.

The CDC also reported a new indigenous dengue fever case in Kaohsiung: a 77-year-old woman who frequently visits a temple in Gushan district (鼓山區). She developed the symptoms of insomnia, diarrhea and fever on April 19 and was confirmed to have been infected with dengue fever three days later.

Meanwhile, an imported case of chikungunya fever was also reported in the same district. The patient, a 37-year-old man, went to Brazil on a business trip on April 12 and returned to Taiwan on April 19. He developed symptoms of fever, and knuckle and muscle sores the following day.

CDC spokeswoman Yang Yu-wen (楊玉玟) said the CDC was not worried too much about an outbreak of chikungunya fever, noting that the number of imported cases amounted to only four this year, and all had come from Southeast Asia.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-22
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Tainan City Council Speaker Lee Chuan-chiao was sentenced to four years in prison Friday for buying votes in the December 25, 2014 election for speaker.

His victory at the time was unexpected because Tainan City Mayor William Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party had won a majority of seats on the council in the November 29 local elections of that year.

The allegations against Lee, a member of the Kuomintang, led to a refusal by Lai’s administration to face questioning by the council, which itself provoked sanctions by the Control Yuan against the mayor. Lai later gave up his boycott of almost eight months due to the spread of dengue fever in the city.

The Tainan District Court found Lee, 56, guilty of vote-buying and also deprived him of his civil rights for five years. The verdict meant Lee would have to give up his position as speaker and would be suspended as a member of the Tainan City Council. He would be barred from participating in council meetings but would still receive his salary, reports said.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/22
By: Chang Jung-hsiang and Kay Liu

The National Museum of Taiwan Literature in Tainan is located in a former Japanese colonial government building that marks its centenary this year.

It is a landmark building that stands near a massive roundabout, where seven main streets meet, and is surrounded by several other historical buildings from the same period, such as Hayashi Department Store.

The museum was formally opened to the public in November 2003, and has a collection of 150,000 books, manuscripts, photos, letters and artifacts of around 500 Taiwanese writers.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: April 22, 2016

A global talent recruitment initiative organized by Taiwan External Trade

Development Council (TAITRA) is helping deepen the local talent pool and boosting the nation’s competitiveness.

Contact Taiwan, the portal service launched as HiRecruit in 2003, has assisted in 5,755 employer-employee matchmaking cases to date. Last year, 16 recruitment events at home and abroad attracted 167 enterprises and added 396 foreign high-end professionals to the workforce.

Local firms eyeing expansion in Southeast Asia are benefitting in particular from the service. A case in point is Central Taiwan’s Changhua County-headquartered Cheng Shin Rubber Ind. Co. Ltd., one of the world’s top 10 tire companies in terms of revenue.

Operating globally under the Maxxis brand, Cheng Shin has built an extensive presence in Association of Southeast Asian Nations economies like Thailand and Vietnam. The company views the program as invaluable in helping Taiwan enterprises tap such emerging markets.

“The hassle-free service put us in touch with a range of locally based personnel out of reach previously,” a Cheng Shin official said. “It has made a real contribution to the success of our operations in ASEAN markets, and we expect this partnership to further develop going forward.”     [FULL  STORY]

BACKING:President-elect Tsai shared poll results that showed the Cabinet had an about 50 percent approval rating, spokesperson-designate Tung Chen-yuan said

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 23, 2016
By: Loa Iok-sin / Staff reporter

Premier-designate Lin Chuan (林全) yesterday introduced the fundamental

policy directions proposed by president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to his future Cabinet members, while promising to entrust each member to accomplish policy objectives.

“The event is meant to have future Cabinet members systematically understand the core ideas of the president-elect and to integrate as a team when presenting policies,” Cabinet spokesperson-designate Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) told a news conference held following a three-hour meeting attended by Tsai, Lin and Lin’s future Cabinet members who have been introduced to the public.

“Lin said that he would authorize all ministers to accomplish each ministry’s policy objectives, because government officials have been too constrained in the past,” Tung said. “[Lin believes that] only ambitious ministers would win respect from the public, while saying that the entire government will back them up when they propose visions for the nation.”

Tung said that Tsai showed them the results of a recent poll, which indicates Lin’s Cabinet has an approval rating of about 50 percent, which means that the public does not hold the Cabinet in a negative light.     [FULL  STORY]

EDITORIAL
Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-21
By: Taiwan News, Staff Writer

When a crime happens, you catch the suspect. When a crime happens in one country and involves perpetrators and victims from another country, international treaties come looking around the corner.

Suspects can be extradited according to a fixed procedure and be prosecuted and tried by a court in their own country or in another country.

However, all of that gets thrown overboard when Taiwan and China are at play.

Courts in distant Kenya, a country which does not maintain official democratic relations, apparently ruled that several Taiwanese suspects in fraud rings scamming by phone or Internet could be released. Under normal procedures, they might have been deported to their country of origin, in that case Taiwan.

However, with the excuse that the alleged victims were Chinese, China persuaded the Kenyan authorities to disregard their own judiciary’s rulings and send up to 45 Taiwanese straight to Beijing.     [FULL  STORY]