Eye On Taiwan

Taiwan’s pro baseball league to allow 250 fans per game: CECC Posted: 03 May 2020 02:01 PM PDT Focus Taiwan Date: 05/03/2020 By: Chang Ming-hsuan, Hsieh Ching-wen and Joseph Yeh A Rakuten Monkeys player pitches in front of empty stands during a home game May 1. Taipei, May 3 (CNA) The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said Sunday that it expects to soon allow a maximum of 250 fans attend local professional baseball games, which are currently played behind closed-doors due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. According to CECC Deputy Commander Chen Tsung-yen (陳宗彥), the local Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) has proposed allowing a maximum 500 people attend each game, a proposal the CECC is expected to approve as part of measures to gradually loosen restrictions, as Taiwan's efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have been relatively successful so far. Deducting players, coaches, cheerleaders of both teams as well as CPBL staffers, referees and broadcasting crew, who are already allowed to attend, a maximum 250 fans will soon be allowed to buy tickets to watch CPBL games, according to Chen. The maximum attendance cap may soon be expanded if the country continues its success in containing the virus, he added.    [FULL  STORY]

Kemet Gains After China Approves $1.8 Bln Sale To Taiwan Apple Supplier Yageo Posted: 03 May 2020 01:58 PM PDT Forbes Date: May 3, 2020 By: Russell Flannery, Forbes Staff A worker on a production line at Yageo Corp. plant in China. Photographer: Kevin Lee/Bloomberg News BLOOMBERG NEWS Shares in U.S. electronics component supplier Kemet closed at a four-month high at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, ending a week in which China regulators approved its $1.8 billion purchase by Yageo Corp. of Taiwan. Yageo, which makes electronic components such as capacitors and resistors, said on April 29 China’s Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the State Administration for Market Regulation had given a go-ahead to the Kemet deal. That follows a similar approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. on April 23. The two clearances complete all international antitrust approvals needed for the transaction, which is expected to wrap-up in the third quarter, Yageo said. The Kemet acquisition, announced last November, is one of the largest in the U.S. by a Taiwan company. It follows Yageo’s purchase of Pulse Electronics of San Diego in 2019 for $740 million, and will bring Yageo’s combined U.S. transactions to $2.5 billion in two years. Kemet is headquartered in Florida.    [FULL  STORY]

Liu’s sixes help FCC top T10 Posted: 03 May 2020 01:52 PM PDT SECOND WEEKEND: A crew producing the tourney’s livestream were briefly put at risk when FCC Formosans’ Anthony Liu put one of his five sixes onto the roof of their tent Taipei Times Date: May 04, 2020 By: Grant Dexter / Staff reporter FCC Formosans opener Anthony Liu plays a shot during their Taipei T10 League match against the ICCT Smashers at the Yingfeng Cricket Ground in Songshan District yesterday. Photo courtesy of Ashish Purswaney @ashish_747 Anthony Liu continued his good form at the Taipei T10 Cricket league, even putting the new-to-the-game technical crew in danger with one six over forward-square at the Yingfeng Cricket Ground yesterday. The FCC Formosans opener cracked the first half-century of the tournament, although Vishwajit Tawar of the Chiayi Swingers later in the day bettered Liu’s innings of 51 against the ICCT Smashers. However, the crew who are producing the livestream for the tournament — which was put together to serve cricket-starved fans worldwide amid the COVID-19 pandemic — were momentarily put at risk when Liu put one of his five sixes onto the roof of a tent covering them and their equipment. His next maximum produced no such danger, easily clearing the long-off fence.    [FULL  STORY]

Two Taiwan hotels close due to coronavirus Posted: 03 May 2020 01:47 PM PDT Ching Sheng Hotel at Sun Moon Lake in Nantou County and Tayih Landis Hotel in Tainan City to shutter in May and June Taiwan News Date: 2020/05/03 By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer (Ching Sheng Hotel website photo) TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Ching Sheng Hotel (景聖樓) at Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan’s Nantou County and Tayih Landis Hotel in Tainan City (台南大億麗緻酒店) will close their doors in May and June, respectively, due to economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, CNA reported on Sunday (May 3). According to the report, Ching Sheng Hotel, run by Wenwu Temple, will close on May 26 and lay off 24 employees. Wen Wu Temple Chairman Chang De-lin (張德林) said on Sunday the hotel has lost more than NT$10 million (US$330,000) over the past four years. He added the situation had been exacerbated by a big decline in the number of Chinese coming to Taiwan. The hotel will be closed to prevent further losses, CNA quoted Chang as saying. An employee said the hotel is set to shutter on May 26. Meanwhile, Tayih Landis Hotel, the first five-star hotel in Tainan, has reportedly decided to shutter on June 30. Hotel owner Tayih Group rented the building from the building owner, Cathay Life Insurance, and opened the hotel in 2002.    [FULL  STORY]

Changes are coming in post-globalization world economy: experts Posted: 03 May 2020 01:43 PM PDT Focus Taiwan Date: 05/03/2020 By: Pan Tzu-yu and Kay Liu Taipei, May 3 (CNA) Changes are expected in the post-globalization world created by trade friction between the United States and China, especially after the fragility of supply chains has been exposed by the COVID-19 conoravirus pandemic, experts have said. The globalized world that saw the rise of China and relative decline of the U.S. is set to change because of trade disputes between the two largest economies in the world and the outbreak of COVID-19, said Darson Chiu (邱達生), a research fellow at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, in a recent interview with CNA. China's lack of transparency regarding the COVID-19 outbreak is likely to hurt other countries' confidence in Beijing, and affect the progress of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade negotiations, Chiu said. According to the most recent joint declaration made last November by the 10 ASEAN countries, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India, most were preparing to sign the RCEP pact except India, which had outstanding issues to be resolved.    [FULL  STORY]

Virus Outbreak: Banks approve 8,254 new relief loans Posted: 03 May 2020 01:40 PM PDT PANDEMIC AID: Seventy-one percent of non-government relief were approved by state-run banks, for an average of NT$13 million per application, FSC data showed Taipei Times Date: May 04, 2020 By: Kao Shih-ching / Staff reporter From left, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Chuan-neng, Minister Without Portfolio Kung Ming-hsin and Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Wellington Koo attend a news conference in Taipei on Friday to announce the number of individuals and companies applying for COVID-19 relief loans. Photo: CNA Local banks had approved 8,254 loan applications totaling NT$124 billion (US$4.16 billion) for businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as of Wednesday last week, a surge of 63 percent and 51.9 percent respectively from a week earlier, according to figures released by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC). Seventy-two percent of the loans, or NT$89.9 billion, were provided to 7,778 companies under a Ministry of Economic Affairs assistance program for the nation’s manufacturers and small and medium-sized enterprises, commission data showed. The ministry last month announced that it would subsidize interest payments for companies whose revenue dropped by at least 15 percent from last year’s average, on condition that the companies do not reduce their employees’ working hours or salaries. Another 27.5 percent of the loans, or NT$34.1 billion, were offered to 473 tourism agencies, airlines, hotels and transportation firms. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications is to help subsidize those firms with interest payments and handling fees.    [FULL  STORY]

The rise of the Indo-Pacific Posted: 03 May 2020 01:21 PM PDT How coronavirus is accelerating the emergence of a new geopolitical formation.  New Statesman Date: 3 May 2020 By: Jeremy Cliffe GETTY A fishing boat on the South China Sea What do these news events from the past week have in common? Two US warships sailed by the Spratly and Paracel island chains in the South China Sea. Australia announced that it would support Taiwan’s return to the World Health Organisation (WHO). In Delhi, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi hosted a ministerial meeting on how to lure manufacturing firms from China to India. The link is summed up in a recently published book, Indo-Pacific Empire. It came out in early March, so was written before the Covid-19 pandemic struck. But it is impressively prescient. In it Rory Medcalf, Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, highlights an emerging formation on the geopolitical map: the Indo-Pacific, a growing web of alliances centred on the “Quad” of India, Japan, Australia and the US, but also taking in a crescent of maritime states in eastern, south-eastern and southern Asia. Looser and more multipolar than other such formations, it is unified by the quest to balance, dilute and absorb Chinese power. “The Indo-Pacific is both a region and an idea: a metaphor for collective action, self-help combined with mutual help,” writes Medcalf. Two months on from its publication, virtually all of the trends that his book draws together have advanced. Scepticism towards China is mounting. In an escalating war of words, Australia has called for an investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 outbreak. Japan’s economic rescue package included almost 250bn yen (some $2.2bn) to support Japanese firms in moving production out of China. India has tightened investment restrictions in a move clearly aimed at shielding domestic firms from Chinese takeovers; Modi’s meeting illustrating the country's new willingness to style itself as a rival manufacturing hub.    [FULL  STORY]

Posted: 03 May 2020 01:11 PM PDT FARS News Agency May 03, 2020 4:15 Scientists in Iran, Taiwan Use Caspian Sea Seashells to Treat Bone Defects TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian researchers at the University of Tehran and Taiwan University of Technology in a joint study used Caspian Sea seashells to treat patients suffering from bone defects. “One of the most important applications of this bio ceramic is orthopaedic surgery in mass or coating shape at the implant surface, spinal surgery and drug or protein carrier with controlled release capability,” Shahrou Savand, one of the Iranian researchers, said. The researcher added that the materials produced from the Caspian Sea seashells can also be used in bone composites for the preparation of tissue engineering scaffolds and treatment of bone defects. Musculoskeletal disorders in the elderly have significantly increased due to the increase in an ageing population. The treatment of these diseases necessitates surgical procedures, including total joint replacements such as hip and knee joints.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwanese epidemiologist expects heat to slow virus spread but urges caution Posted: 03 May 2020 01:05 PM PDT Expert says he looks forward to seeing virus less potent as temperatures warm Taiwan News Date: 2020/05/03 By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer CECC advisory specialist panel convener Chang Shan-chwen (CNA photo) TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳), the advisory specialist panel convener at Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), said on Sunday (May 3) that he expects the spread of Wuhan coronavirus to be slowed by the summer heat; however, he urged the public to remain cautious and observant, CNA reported. In the past, influenza has typically broken out during the fall and winter seasons, with a comparatively low chance of it happening in summer, Chang said at the CECC daily press briefing. Therefore, he added, it's likely that the epidemic will taper off in the coming months, continuing that there is theoretical basis for the speculation. Chang qualified his remarks by clarifying that although the above-mentioned view is valid for the temperate region, things may be different in the tropics.    [FULL  STORY]

Mercury in Taitung hits nearly 38 degrees Sunday due to foehn winds Posted: 03 May 2020 01:02 PM PDT Focus Taiwan Date: 05/03/2020 By: Wang Shu-fen and Evelyn Kao Lenticular clouds formed by foehn winds rise over Taitung County in southeastern Taiwan Sunday. Photo courtesy of a member of the public. Taipei, May 3 (CNA) Several weather stations in Taitung County on Sunday recorded their highest temperature this year, with the mercury soaring to nearly 38 degrees Celsius in Jinlun Village, Taimali Township, according to the Central Weather Bureau (CWB). Under the influence of foehn winds, the mercury in Jinlun soared to 37.9 Celsius degrees at 2:10 p.m. Sunday, the highest level recorded anywhere in Taiwan this year, according to the CWB. A foehn wind is a type of dry, warm, down-slope wind that occurs on the lee (downwind side) of a mountain range. The other highest weather station temperatures of the year were 37.6 degrees in Jialan Village, Jinfeng Township at 15:30 p.m. and 37.3 degrees in Dawu at 12:49 p.m.    [FULL  STORY]