Front Page

Hung Hsiu-chu to stress solidarity in KMT congress speech: spokesman

Want China Times
Date: 2015-07-19
By: CNA

Hung Hsiu-chu will address the importance of solidarity in her nomination speech after she is

Hung Hsiu-chu at a campaign activity in Kaohsiung, July 14. (File photo/Lu Su-li)

Hung Hsiu-chu at a campaign activity in Kaohsiung, July 14. (File photo/Lu Su-li)

formally confirmed as the Kuomintang’s presidential candidate at its party congress on Sunday, Hung’s campaign office spokesman Yu Tzu-hsiang said Saturday.

In the five-minute speech, Hung will also touch on cross-strait relations, backing the party policy of adhering to the 1992 Consensus while avoiding her controversial “one China, common interpretation” formula for ties with China she proposed in June, Yu said.

The spokesman suggested that Hung and party headquarters have reached a mutual understanding on the contents of the speech Hung will deliver at the party gathering.    [FULL  STORY]

Ramadan feast celebrated in Taipei Railway Station

SHARING CULTURE:Thousands of Indonesian Muslims gathered in Taipei Railway Station yesterday to feast the end of Ramadan facilitated by the city government

Taipei Times
Date:  Jul 20, 2015
By: Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter

Thousands of Indonesian workers gathered at the Taipei Railway Station yesterday to

Mostly Indonesian Muslim migrant workers gather in the foyer of Taipei Railway Station yesterday to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times

Mostly Indonesian Muslim migrant workers gather in the foyer of Taipei Railway Station yesterday to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times

celebrate the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting.

The Eid al-Fitr, or the “festival of the breaking of the fast,” is an important religious holiday observed by Muslims around the world.

The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) estimated that between 10,000 and 20,000 Indonesian workers flocked to the nation’s largest train station yesterday morning for the first Sunday after the Edi al-Fitr began on Friday last week.     [FULL  STORY]

Father of recovering burn victim commits suicide

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/07/18

Taipei, July 18 (CNA) The father of a burn victim in the June 27 colored powder explosion at a 201507180019t0001water park in New Taipei committed suicide Saturday, apparently from stress and sadness over his son’s condition.

Police said the 63-year-old man, surnamed Wang, went missing after he and his wife visited their second son at the Linkou branch of Chang Kung Memorial Hospital on Saturday morning.

His wife reported that her husband, who was a taxi driver, went missing afterwards.

Their eldest son found that his father had hanged himself in the family’s old, unoccupied home in Chungli. The father did not leave a suicide note.     [FULL  STORY]

6 killed, 1 injured in car accident

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/07/18
By: Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, July 18 (CNA) A car accident caused by a blown tire on Taiwan’s north-south Freeway 201507180018t0001No. 3 claimed six lives Saturday, with another person injured in the crash in intensive care, highway police said.

A van with a seating capacity of five people was taking four men and three women to an engagement ceremony in Changhua County when it lost control in Miaoli County, police said.

An initial investigation found that a blown left rear tire was to blame, as it caused the van to lose control, overturn and fall over the side of the elevated highway.

China’s Taiwan Denial

Wall Street Journal
Date: Jul 18, 2015
By: Josh Chin

China is in denial about its alienation of Taiwan and needs to rethink its approach to the

Zhang Zhijun, left, director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, shakes hands with Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Andrew Hsia on May 23, 2015. Larry Lin/Reuters

Zhang Zhijun, left, director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, shakes hands with Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Andrew Hsia on May 23, 2015. Larry Lin/Reuters

island, the top official in charge of managing Taipei’s relationship with Beijing said on Friday.

“Somehow they need to think of how to do some soul-searching,” said Andrew Hsia, the head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council. He said that his counterparts in Beijing seemed “puzzled” by growing antipathy among Taiwanese people toward China.

The comments from Mr. Hsia, delivered in a conversation with The Wall Street Journal in New York, show how mainland China’s declining image in Taiwan has complicated relations ahead of the island’s presidential elections, whose outcome could frustrate Beijing’s desire for closer ties.

Relations between Taiwan and China have long been fraught; the two sides split in 1949 following a civil war. The past seven years, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou and his ruling Nationalist Party have worked to reduce tensions in a bid to boost the island’s economy. But stagnating wages and growing income inequality have become front-burner issues for many in Taiwan, and some see trade and commercial dealings the mainland as contributing to those problems. They question the concessions Taipei is making to Beijing, which has refused to disavow force in bringing about eventual reunification.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan promotes its island claim in South China Sea

Seattlepi.com
Date: July 18, 2015
By RALPH JENNINGS, Associated Press

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — As China builds artificial islands in a vast resource-rich South China

FILE -This Monday, May 11, 2015, file photo taken through a glass window of a military plane shows China's alleged on-going reclamation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. As China builds artificial islands in a vast resource-rich South China Sea and neighbors in Southeast Asia brace for possible conflict, Taiwan is cutting carbon emissions and offering a hospital for humanitarian aid on the sea’s largest natural islet to seek international approval for easing tension. (Ritchie B. Tongo/Pool Photo via AP) Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, AP / European Pressphoto Agency POOL

FILE -This Monday, May 11, 2015, file photo taken through a glass window of a military plane shows China’s alleged on-going reclamation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. As China builds artificial islands in a vast resource-rich South China Sea and neighbors in Southeast Asia brace for possible conflict, Taiwan is cutting carbon emissions and offering a hospital for humanitarian aid on the sea’s largest natural islet to seek international approval for easing tension. (Ritchie B. Tongo/Pool Photo via AP) Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, AP / European Pressphoto Agency POOL

Sea and neighbors in Southeast Asia brace for possible conflict, Taiwan is cutting carbon emissions and offering a hospital for humanitarian aid on the sea’s largest natural islet to seek international approval for easing tension.

Taiwan’s unusual use of Taiping Island in the heavily contested Spratly archipelago may appeal particularly to the United States, a staunch, long-time informal ally that has at least scrutinized the legal basis for Taiwan’s maritime claims. Washington, seeking stable relations with China as well, has also urged the six claimants to cooperate rather than fight.

Taiwan, which lacks the diplomatic ties to negotiate with the other five governments with claims in the South China Sea, has installed $1.29 million worth of solar panels on Taiping Island since 2011 to light a cluster of buildings and provide power for construction of a 200-meter (yard) pier due for completion by year’s end, the head of the island’s coast guard said Friday.     [FULL  STORY]

Sizzling into summer

‘Mr Barbecue’ offers tips on how to grill up a mouth-watering steak (hint: use charcoal)

Taipei Times
Date:  Jul 18, 2015
By: Peter Elliot  /  Bloomberg Business

Jonathan Waxman was a Berkeley, California hippy who fell into the restaurant trade, running

A vendor barbecues chicken at a food stall in a market in Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia last week. Photo: Bloomberg

A vendor barbecues chicken at a food stall in a market in Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia last week. Photo: Bloomberg

the kitchens at Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse in the late 1970s and palling around with culinary rock-stars like Jeremiah Tower and Michael McCarty. Together they brought a relaxed, ingredient-focused sensibility to eating that came to be known as “California cuisine.”

Waxman’s seminal restaurant Jams closed in the ‘80s, but he kept in the game. He’s been running the more Italian-focused Barbuto in New York’s West Village since 2004 and last year opened Adele’s in Nashville, Tennessee, which is named after his mother and features a giant wood-burning oven at its center. He’s become the gentle grandfather of a new generation of chefs. As he prepares to reopen Jams in 1 Hotel Central Park this month, another Adele’s in Toronto and a possible return to his home turf in San Francisco, Bloomberg Brief’s Peter Elliot caught up with him at Barbuto.     [FULL  STORY]

Students paint on the walls of the Ministry of Education

Taiwan News
Date: 2015-07-18
By: Jocylin FC, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

A group of students who are part of Junior School Alliance for Education went to the Ministry

Students paint the walls of the MOE. Central News Agency (2015-07-18 03:03:16)

Students paint the walls of the MOE. Central News Agency (2015-07-18 03:03:16)

of Education around 9pm on July 17 and painted, “ Anti-brainwash, Anti- black box, Stupid Government”, on the pillars of the front courtyard and the walls.

“We want objective history! We reject a brainwashed education that is full of flaws! We demand the Ministry of Education to retrieve the altered curricula!” yelled the students who climbed over the exterior walls of the Ministry of Education and painted their statements on the pillars and walls in the front courtyard. The students were arrested within 4 minutes. Other 6 students who remained outside of the walls proclaimed their statement and protested intensely.

Tsai Hsi-chih, the spokesman for the student alliance, said the altered curricula will directly    affect high school students who will be attending 10th grade this year. He is also one of them.     [FULL  STORY]

Wanggong Fireworks Festival opens with prayers, music

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/07/18
By: Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, July 18 (CNA) A two-day festival celebrating traditional culture and pop music opened 201507180010t0002in Wanggong in Changhua County on Saturday, starting with a religious ceremony that prayed for good fortune for the country.

The ceremony held near Fuhaigong Temple was attended by Changhua County Magistrate Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷), who lauded Wanggong’s sunset over the sea and local cuisine as reasons to visit the area.

Now in its 11th year, the annual Wanggong Fireworks Festival features a fireworks display, a live concert, numerous cultural performances and local delicacies, according to the county government.

Positioned as one of the country’s largest three music festivals — along with the Kenting Music Festival in Pingtung and the Ho-Hai-Yan Gongliao Rock Festival in New Taipei — the Wanggong festival blends tradition and modernity, according to organizers.     [FULL  STORY]

US experts to help treat burn patients from Taiwan dust explosion

Want China Times
Date: 2015-07-18
By: CNA

A group of plastic and reconstructive surgeons and therapists from Johns Hopkins Medicine

Medical staff members treat a burn victim from the water park disaster at Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in New Taipei, July 10. (Photo courtesy of Far Eastern Memorial Hospital)

Medical staff members treat a burn victim from the water park disaster at Far Eastern Memorial Hospital in New Taipei, July 10. (Photo courtesy of Far Eastern Memorial Hospital)

will arrive in Taipei this weekend to help treat patients who suffered severe burns last month in a water park disaster, a Ministry of Health and Welfare official said Friday.

Most of the six members of the Johns Hopkins team will travel to Taipei from Los Angeles on the presidential plane with President Ma Ying-jeou, who is en route home from a state visit to Central America and the Caribbean.

The president announced the US medical team’s week-long visit to Taiwan at a dinner party hosted by overseas Chinese communities on Thursday in Los Angeles, where Ma was transiting.     [FULL  STORY]