Read News 2020.05.01: Global Focus Topics and Events

May 1, 2020 (ROC Year 109) — a daily roundup of trending global news topics, covering technology, lifestyle, travel, transportation, industry and finance, business, corporations, stocks, foreign exchange markets, investment, real estate, automobiles, breaking news, sports, entertainment gossip, art, design, politics, society, Taiwan, mainland China, cross-strait relations, weather, natural disasters, current affairs, and more.

The “Read News” section collects the headline events and brief summaries of the most important key news from around the world that deserve your attention in recent days, tracing the currents of society through the flow of news events listed quickly one after another.

Global Focus Topics for May 1, 2020

• International and Social Focus
• Technology and Information
• Business and Investment
• Science and Health
• Travel and Leisure

International and Social Focus

Chang Ya-chin falls from grace! Choking up while discussing the “Linsen Cashbox deadly fire,” netizens aren’t buying it: double standards are pathetic! The Linsen Cashbox KTV fire in Taipei caused a tragedy with 5 deaths, and the Cashbox owner happens to be Lien Tai-sheng, chairman of the Era Group. Everyone is watching to see whether Era Television and Next TV report fairly.

In the Sunflower Movement “storming the Executive Yuan” case, the Taiwan High Court handed down its second-instance verdict on the 28th, finding Wei Yang, Liu Ching-wen, and 7 others guilty of inciting others to commit crimes, reversing the earlier acquittal to a guilty verdict.

National Taiwan University president Kuan Chung-ming was accused of illegal moonlighting, and the Civil Service Disciplinary Committee of the Republic of China issued a reprimand. The then-chairman of the committee, Shih Mu-chin, was also the presiding judge in Kuan’s case; today he revealed that Judicial Yuan President Hsu Tzong-li and former Secretary-General, now Grand Justice Lu Tai-lang, repeatedly improperly “probed” into the Kuan case.

U.S. intelligence agencies publicly stated that the novel coronavirus was not man-made or genetically modified. This was Washington’s first explicit statement on the origin of the virus, overturning the most extreme “bioweapon theory” among the many conspiracy theories (especially Trump’s).

Technology and Information

Data released Wednesday (the 29th) by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) under the U.S. Department of Commerce showed that the preliminary estimate of U.S. GDP for the first quarter of 2020 fell 4.8%, a contraction larger than market expectations, the first drop into negative territory since the first quarter of 2014, and the lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis.

Business and Investment

Starting May 1, when real estate agents or sales agents offer existing-home sales, they must disclose information such as relay pump machine rooms or water tanks and mobile phone base station facilities in the “Real Estate Property Description.” Violations will result in a fine of NT$60,000 to NT$300,000 for the real estate brokerage industry.

Today the Ministry of Labor announced the “Ministry of Labor Guidelines for Relief Loans and Interest Subsidies for Workers Affected by Severe Special Infectious Pneumonia,” launching low-interest relief loans for workers in financial difficulty. The loan interest rate is calculated at the Chunghwa Post two-year time deposit floating rate plus one percent, currently 1.845%, and the Ministry of Labor subsidizes the interest for the first year of the loan. The first 6 months of the first year are a grace period during which workers need not pay principal; from the 7th to the 12th month they repay principal, and from the second year onward they repay principal and interest monthly.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, bottled gas prices are frozen this month! CPC announced that May prices for household liquefied petroleum gas (bottled gas), industrial propane, butane and mixed propane-butane, and vehicle liquefied petroleum gas will all remain unchanged; domestic natural gas prices will drop by an average of 10.14% starting on the 2nd, reducing household users’ monthly bills by about NT$30.9 to NT$46.35 based on average monthly usage.

In the Taipei foreign exchange market, the New Taiwan dollar’s exchange rate against the U.S. dollar was unstoppably strong, closing today (the 30th) up 1.49 jiao at NT$29.802 per U.S. dollar, with a turnover of US$1.261 billion.

Science and Health

75% alcohol is now included as one of the items under export control by the Bureau of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economic Affairs; a Ministry of Health and Welfare permit is required to export it abroad. However, TTL’s 75% epidemic-prevention alcohol will no longer be mandatorily allocated to national health insurance pharmacies starting May 12, but will return to market mechanisms; pharmacies in need must order from TTL themselves, and it will no longer be “available at every pharmacy.”

For the first time domestically, there were four consecutive days of “zero confirmed cases,” totaling seventeen days without local cases. Chen Shih-chung, commander of the Central Epidemic Command Center of the Republic of China, said, “The current epidemic prevention measures are pushing the line of defense back to the individual,” hoping that wearing masks will become a daily national habit. The upcoming May Day long weekend is a touchstone for gradually loosening social and venue restrictions.

The latest research suggests that people with high blood pressure can lower their blood pressure by increasing their daily walking. This study was presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in late March. Over the 5 months of the experiment, participants walked an average of 7,500 steps per day, and those who walked more steps daily had significantly lower blood pressure. After accounting for other factors, researchers found that for every 1,000 steps walked per day, systolic blood pressure could drop by about 0.45 mmHg; that is, people who walked more than 10,000 steps per day had systolic blood pressure 2.25 mmHg lower than those who walked 5,000 steps per day.

A Swedish study indicates that filtering coffee, for example by using filter paper, not only reduces the risk of heart disease but can also extend lifespan. The results were published Wednesday in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, showing that men aged 60 and above who drank unfiltered coffee had higher cardiovascular mortality, while those who drank one to four cups of filtered coffee per day had the lowest mortality.

Travel and Leisure

The Jinsha Township Office in the Kinmen area has launched a mask (AR augmented reality) travel style…