SPORTS
Ko signs for Gay Games bid
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Friday signed an official letter backing the Taiwan Gay Sports and Taiwan Gay Development Movement Association’s application for Taipei to host the 2026 Gay Games. The administration said that the event could potentially attract 15,000 athletes to the city. The quadrennial event is the largest sports competition for the international LGBT community. In 2018, Taiwan won 10 gold, five silver and three bronze medals at the games in Paris. Taiwan is competing with more than 20 cities from 14 nations for hosting rights. The Sports Administration said it is working with the association to host the Straits Games in October next year.
POLITICS
Ministers remain in shuffle
Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) and Minister of National Defense Yen De-fa (嚴德發) are to remain in their posts when President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) second-term Cabinet takes office on Wednesday, sources said yesterday. Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通), Veterans Affairs Council Minister Feng Shih-kuan (馮世寬) and Ocean Affairs Council Minister Lee Chung-wei (李仲威) are to stay in their current roles, they said. The government is carrying out a Cabinet reshuffle ahead of Tsai’s re-inauguration next week. The sources said that Representative to Thailand Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) would replace Wu Hsin-hsing (吳新興) as overseas community affairs council minister.
SOCIETY
Miaoli doctor recognized
Hsieh Chun-mei (謝春梅), a physician who served his Miaoli community for more than seven decades until his death at the age of 99 last month, was on Friday posthumously awarded a presidential citation. President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) presented the citation to Hsieh’s family at his funeral in Miaoli County’s Gongguan Township (公館). Thanking him for his lifelong service to his hometown and society, Tsai asked the Hakka Affairs Council to ensure that his story is recorded so that it can be told for generations to come. Hsieh, who was the oldest certified medical practitioner in Taiwan, passed away on April 29. Born into a poor farming family, he received his medical license in 1944 during the Japanese colonial rule. Instead of moving to Taipei, he chose to remain in Gongguan as his father had asked him to stay because there were no doctors in his village. He saw patients nearly every day, and even provided healthcare to people who could not afford treatment, his family said.
LABOR
Taiwan tops complaints
Nearly one-third of complaints filed by Indonesian migrant fishers are employed on Taiwanese ships, the most of any nation, according to statistics released by the Indonesian National Board for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers. Of the 389 complaints it received from 2018 to Wednesday last week, 120 were filed by fishers working on Taiwanese ships, agency head Benny Rhamdani said. Fishers working on South Korean ships reported the second-highest number of complaints, with 42, followed by Peru (30), China (23) and South Africa (16). The agency said that 164 of the complaints involved unpaid wages, while 47 involved deaths, 46 dealt with injuries, 23 with forced deportations and 18 fishers reported that their passports or other documents had been confiscated by brokers. While 213 of the complaints have been resolved, the rest are still being processed, it added.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
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