Taipei Times
Date: Apr 25, 2015
By: Alison Hsiao  /  Staff reporter

Tainan City Council Speaker Lee Chuan-chiao (李全教), who is charged with

vote-buying, yesterday held what he called an “international press conference” to accuse Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) of “ruining the spirit of democracy” with his ongoing boycott of the council and to question Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) “eligibility” as a prospective president for supporting Lai.

“I want to accuse,” Lee said at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, speaking partly in English. “Lai used his massive budget and political resources to share the positions to those prosecutor [sic] and judge” who “try to sentence me [sic].”

Likening his 54 days in detention to “hell” and saying he was charged without “evidence or reason,” Lee said he wanted to make public his accusations against Lai “to the media and the world,” which could “assess the value of the justice” for him.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-04-25
By: Samuel Hui

Jason Hu, the former mayor of Taichung, said that it is not necessary for the

nation to choose a side between mainland China and the United States, since Beijing and Washington are not playing a zero-sum game, during a seminar held by the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, a non-profit organization based in Taipei on April 25.

Immediately after Hu, who also previously served as Taiwan’s foreign minister, became the mayor of Taichung in 2001, he began to push for a normalized relationship between the city and mainland China. Eager for the city to benefit from the growth of China’s economy, Hu was one of the very first incumbent mayors to visit Beijing in 2005. “As the head of a city, it was much easier for me to establish contacts in mainland China than as the head of a nation,” said Hu. “The issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty was not really a problem between me and the officials in Beijing.”     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-04-24
By: CNA

Taiwan ranked 38th in the 2015 World Happiness Report, up four spots from

last year.

The report, which covers 158 countries around the world, was released Thursday in New York by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations.

It uses six variables to measure happiness: real GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

The happiest country in the world in 2015 is Switzerland, followed by Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada, according to the report.

Rounding out the top 10 are Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia.

The United States is ranked 15th, while the United Kingdom and Germany are in 21st and 26th, respectively.     [FULL  STORY]

NO AGENDA:President Ma Ying-jeou, who resigned as KMT chairman in November, failed to set up a meeting with the Chinese president at the APEC summit last year

Taipei Times
Date:  Apr 25, 2015
By: Shih Hsiu-chuan  /  Staff reporter

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman and New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu

(朱立倫) is set to meet with Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing on May 4 after a forum in Shanghai, the KMT announced yesterday.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) announced the meeting simultaneously, calling it “a major event” in high-level exchanges between the CCP and the KMT.

Specific issues up for discussion were not revealed by either party, except a broad theme of “prospects for cross-strait relations” and “welfare of the people on both sides of the [Taiwan] Strait,” according to their statements.

“The agenda is not yet finalized, because it takes time to consult each other on details,” KMT spokesperson Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中) said.

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/04/24
By Kuo Chu-chen and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, April 24 (CNA) The first bluefin tuna caught by Taiwanese fishermen in waters off Taiwan this season was auctioned Friday for NT$1.68 million (US$54,000) in Pingtung County, southern Taiwan.

The fish, caught by Pingtung Donggang-registered fishing boat Man Ta Feng No.12 (滿大豐12號), weighted 366 kilograms, breaking the previous record of 320 kg.

At the auction, which was presided over by Pingtung Magistrate Pan Meng-an (潘孟安) and Fishery Agency Director-General Tsay Tzu-yaw (蔡日耀), the tuna was sold to a local seafood restaurant for NT$4,600 per kg.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/04/24
By: Tseng Ying-yu, Tai Ya-chen, Wen Kuei-hsiang and Scully Hsiao

Taipei, April 24 (CNA) Lawmakers across party lines failed Friday to reach

consensus on sending a draft bill monitoring Taiwan’s pacts with China to a legislative committee for review, meaning that further delays for the bill and for a controversial trade pact with China are inevitable.

Lawmakers were expected Friday to vote on a motion to reconsider sending the bill for review by the Legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, more than a year after the bill was drafted to answer student protesters’ calls for increased scrutinty of any agreements Taiwan signs with China.

However, negotiations between ruling and opposition lawmakers broke down over who from the ruling Kuomintang (KMT, 國民黨) might chair the review once the motion was voted down, as the ruling party and opposition camp vied for control of the review.     [FULL  STORY]

SHORTER HOURS?Labor rights advocates described the proposed changes as meaningless, as they would also raise the cap on overtime hours by eight per month

Taipei Times
Date:  Apr 24, 2015
By: Alison Hsiao and Lii Wen  /  Staff reporters

The Executive Yuan yesterday approved a proposal that would cut the

workweek to 40 hours, raise the cap on overtime work to 54 hours per month and extend the application of the two days off per week policy across the board.

The proposal, which still has to be approved by the Legislative Yuan, is expected to benefit 3.4 million workers, the Ministry of Labor said.

The proposed amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) would change current regulations defining regular working time as 84 hours every two weeks to 40 hours per week, while raising the maximum limit on overtime work from 46 hours to 54 hours per month to minimize its effect on industries, Minister of Labor Chen Hsiung-wen (陳雄文) said.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-04-23
By: CNA and Staff Reporter

Taiwanese businesses in Vietnam have not received reasonable compensation

nearly one year after a deadly anti-Chinese riot in the Southeast Asian country, Taiwan’s representative to Vietnam said Wednesday.

Huang Chih-peng, who described the low efficiency of the Vietnamese government during the past year as “a spectacle,” said there remain many Taiwanese businesses that have not been given full compensation.

In protest to the Vietnamese government’s lukewarm reaction to the riot, which left three Chinese dead and some 400 Taiwanese companies affected, Huang said the office does not encourage Taiwanese to invest in the country.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/04/23
By: Bear Lee

Taipei, April 23 (CNA) An individual was lucky enough to win the highest-ever Super Lotto jackpot of NT$3 billion (US$96.48 million) alone Thursday from a lottery shop in Wufeng, Taichung City, according to the Taiwan Lottery Co. (TLC).

The lucky one is expected to earn an after-tax prize money of NT$2.4 billion.

The huge jackpot in the bi-weekly lottery has accumulated over the past 29 draws since no one has come up with the winning 7-number combination in the past 15 weeks.     [FULL  STORY]