HONG KONG SECURITY: The president blasted regulations requiring Taiwanese agents or political organizations to provide information on their Hong Kong-related activities
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday warned of countermeasures should controversial Chinese national security legislation imposed on Hong Kong undermine or harm Taiwanese interests. Article 43 of the legislation empowers the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to serve written notices to Taiwanese political organizations or individual agents to furnish information on their Hong Kong-related activities, including their personal particulars, finances, assets, expenditure and capital in the territory. Failure to comply or providing false or incomplete information can result in a fine of HK$100,000 (US$12,903) or imprisonment of six months or two years respectively. Tsai said that Taiwan would keep a close watch on how
Tobie Openshaw is confident that Taiwan’s government has good reasons for not including him in the Triple Stimulus Voucher Program, which launched at the beginning of this month. That’s just as well, because it seems unlikely he’ll ever discover the logic by which it was decided that he, along with other foreign residents not currently married to Taiwan citizens, shouldn’t receive the vouchers. “We’ve stood side-by-side with our Taiwanese friends through the COVID-19 crisis, complying with government measures, cheering its success and sharing that news with the world at large. If the stimulus coupons are meant to be spent to keep
PROBE LAUNCHED: An officer who served as a supervisor in the drill died in an apparent suicide after the accident, which was caused by unexpected waves
Two marines who were on Friday injured in a military exercise in the waters off Kaohsiung passed away yesterday, Navy Command said. The marines — surnamed Tsai (蔡), 26, and a sergeant surnamed Chen (陳), 36 — were in a seven-member Marine Corps team that encountered rough seas during a simulated response to enemy forces landing on Taiwan. Their rubber craft overturned in waters off Taoziyuan (桃子園) beach in Zuoying District (左營), injuring four of the marines. They were rushed to hospital, where three of them — Tsai, Chen and a 34-year-old sergeant — were taken to an intensive care unit
MORAL COURAGE: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged the global community to face China’s intention to subdue Taiwan and reject such irrational requests
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday strongly condemned the Chinese government for meddling with US officials’ interactions with Taiwan after FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed China’s efforts to discourage US officials from visiting Taiwan. The greatest long-term threat to the US’ information security and intellectual property, as well as its economic vitality, is China’s counterintelligence and economic espionage operations, Wray told a video event at the Hudson Institute in Washington. Beijing is engaged in a highly sophisticated and maligning foreign influence campaign, with methods that include bribery, blackmail and covert deals, he said. Giving an example, Wray said that when a US official
Taiwan might be China’s next target after it has “walled off” Hong Kong from the rest of the world with its new national security legislation, Academia Sinica Institute of Sociology fellow Wu Jieh-min (吳介民) said on Thursday. At a seminar organized by the Economic Democracy Union, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Hong Kong Outlanders and the Judicial Reform Foundation, Wu said that the legislation is simultaneously a fig leaf concealing Beijing’s autocratic rule in Hong Kong and a figurative “Berlin Wall,” denying democratic countries access to Hong Kong. Wu said it is evident that Taiwan would be China’s next target. The
CAUTION: Taiwan had zero cases of death from food poisoning for six years until last year, when two people died after eating wildlife, an FDA official said
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday urged the public not to eat wildlife or unidentified wild plants, as they could be fatal, with nearly 7,000 people affected by food poisoning last year, including two deaths due to wildlife consumption. The number of food poisoning incidents increased by nearly 50 percent last year, from 398 cases involving 4,616 people in the previous year to 503 cases involving 6,944 people, FDA data showed. That figure was the second-highest in history, the FDA said, adding that the highest number was recorded in 1997, with 7,235 people. Among the 503 cases, 87 were food poisoning clusters
MULTIPLIER EFFECT: Executive Yuan spokesman Ting Yi-ming told radio host Clara Chou that he expects as many as 17 million people to join the voucher program
Taiwan’s traditional and night markets are offering some tempting new deals, but only for consumers using their Triple Stimulus Vouchers. A total of 800 vendors at 140 participating traditional and night markets are taking part in the government’s voucher scheme, aiming to attract people to treat themselves after the program starts on Wednesday next week, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ (MOEA) Central Region Office said yesterday. A variety of goodie bags and bargain meals are to be available for NT$200 or NT$500 (US$6.76 or US$16.89) — the value of the paper vouchers — plus a chance to win a NT$2,000 coupon
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday commended the University of British Columbia (UBC) for “resuming its academic autonomy,” after the school said it would refer to the nation as “Taiwan,” instead of as “Taiwan (Province of China)” as it had done in an annual report. In its Enrolment Annual Report 2019-2020 published earlier this year, the Canadian university referred to the nation as “Taiwan (Province of China)” in a table breaking down international students’ countries of citizenship. In the report’s 2018-2019 edition, the school had referred to the nation as “Taiwan” without any parenthesized note. After the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO)
Chinese strongman Xi Jinping (習近平) hasn’t had a very good spring, either economically or politically. Not that long ago, he seemed to be riding high. The PRC economy had been on a long winning streak of more than six percent annual growth, catapulting the world’s most populous nation into the second-largest power, behind only the United States. Hundreds of millions had been brought out of poverty. Beijing’s military too had emerged as the most powerful in Asia, lagging only behind the US, the long-time leader on the global stage. One can attribute much of the recent downturn to the international economic
IN THE PIPELINE: The Ministry of National Defense said the sale, expected to take effect in one month, would be the seventh arms sale under the Trump administration
The government yesterday thanked the US for approving the possible sale of a US$620 million missile repair and recertification package to Taiwan. The US Department of State has approved the sale of a package to recertify Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in Washington for an estimated US$620 million, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a news release on Thursday. The agency has delivered the required certification to the US Congress, notifying it of the possible sale, it added. The TECRO had requested to buy an upgrade package that would support an operational
Beijing authorities yesterday detained a law professor at Tsinghua University who published essays criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) over the COVID-19 pandemic and accusing him of ruling “tyrannically,” his friends said. Xu Zhangrun (許章潤), a rare outspoken critic of the government in China’s heavily censored academia, was taken from his home in suburban Beijing by more than 20 people, one of his friends said on condition of anonymity. Xu published an essay in February blaming the culture of deception and censorship fostered by Xi for the spread of the novel coronavirus in China. China’s “leader system is itself destroying the structure of
YOUNGEST PATIENT: Cases of botulism have been only sporadically reported over the past few years, with two in 2015, six in 2016 and none in the past three years
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the nation’s first case of infant botulism this year, a four-month-old boy in northern Taiwan, as well as five new cases of Japanese encephalitis confirmed last week. The boy was introduced to homemade solid food in the middle of last month, but began to experience constipation and loss of appetite on June 23, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) said, adding that he was taken to the hospital when he developed a fever and shortness of breath on June 25. In the hospital, the boy also experienced a rapid heartbeat, limb
Books by prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy figures have become unavailable in the Chinese-ruled territory’s public libraries as they are being reviewed to see whether they violate new national security legislation, a government department said yesterday. The sweeping legislation, which came into force on Tuesday last week at the same time its contents were published, punishes crimes related to secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with punishments of up to life in prison. Hong Kong public libraries “will review whether certain books violate the stipulations of the National Security Law,” the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, which runs the libraries, said
The National Taiwan Museum’s Railway Department Park in Taipei is to open to the public today. The park in Datong District (大同) near the North Gate (北門, Beimen) is one of the museum’s four branches. During the Japanese colonial era, the site housed the railway department of the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan’s Bureau of Transportation. After World War II, it served as the headquarters for the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) for several decades. In 2007, it was listed as a national monument under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法). At an opening ceremony yesterday, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung
NEW STANDARDS: The policy should slash PM2.5 by 27.3 tonnes per year, down 4.5 percent from current levels, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection said
Taipei is to designate three transportation hubs and six tourist hotspots as “Phase One Air Quality Management Zones,” with the types of vehicles allowed to enter them restricted, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection said in a news release yesterday. Vehicle owners and drivers failing to meet emission standards in those zones would be subject to fines from next year, the agency added. Starting from Jan. 1 next year, large diesel vehicles would need to be certified and bear the government’s “Premium Self-management Logo,” showing that the vehicle’s emissions are in line with government standards, before they could enter the zones, it
Forget your pepperoni or other pizza toppings: Pizza Hut Taiwan has teamed up with Menya Musashi, a popular Japanese ramen restaurant chain, to serve up the world’s first ramen pizza, and it has attracted global interest after a CNN report about the new mashup was published on the front-page of its Japanese version. The new pizza has the toppings of a Japanese-style barbecue pork ramen — complete with thick noodles, barbecue pork slices, fresh chilies and white sesame, as well as a half-boiled egg sitting in the middle. It is also garnished with green onions and bamboo shoots on the side. Pizza
INVALID MEETING: Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua urged the firm’s two warring factions to step up and resolve the situation as soon as possible
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday rejected Tatung Co’s (大同) attempt to register new board directors, saying that the company has misapplied the law to block some shareholders from voting during its annual general meeting held on Tuesday last week. “We don’t consider [the meeting] valid,” Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) told reporters, calling for the two warring factions to step up and resolve the situation as soon as possible. “Either the firm can hold a legitimate shareholder’s meeting or the minority stakeholders can organize their own under Article 173 of the Company Act (公司法),” she said. The ministry
China yesterday opened its national security agency in Hong Kong, turning a hotel near a park that has been one of the most popular venues for pro-democracy protests into its new headquarters. The office, which operates beyond the scrutiny of local courts or other institutions, is to oversee the Hong Kong government’s enforcement of the sweeping national security legislation that Beijing imposed on the territory last week. The legislation gives its agents, operating openly in the global financial hub for the first time, enforcement powers. It allows them to take suspects across the border for trials in China-controlled courts and gives them special
Twenty people were detained for questioning after the National Immigration Agency and law enforcement raided operations allegedly coercing foreign women into prostitution, police said yesterday. Those questioned were suspected members of a prostitution ring led by a man surnamed Cheng (程), 42, and his brother, who allegedly controlled women from the Ukraine, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries, the police said. After receiving tip-offs, the Taoyuan Prosecutors’ Office launched an investigation and placed the Cheng brothers under surveillance, said prosecutor Yeh Yi-fa (葉益發), who is in charge of the investigation, adding that the raids took place in Taipei and Taoyuan
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