Taiwan English News
Date: October 23, 2018 
By: Phillip Charlier  

Dutch scholars joined researchers from Academia Sinica at a press conference today to unveil a cadastral map of the township of Zeelandia dating back to the Dutch colonial period.

Menno Leenstra, a researcher at the Dutch International Heritage Center said that he had stumbled across the map while doing research on the extinct dodo bird three years ago. The map was among documents belonging to the head of the Dutch East India Company, Nicasius de Hooghe. De Hoogue had been killed while on his way back to the Netherlands in 1647, and his documents retained by the notary.

Historians hailed the find as a big step forward in historical research about the Dutch settlement, which was founded in 1624. According to the map, there were 320 houses in the town. Resident’s names are listed, showing a multi-ethnic mix of Dutch, Chinese, and South-east Asian names. Languages spoken in the settlement included Portuguese, Spanish, and Japanese, as well as Dutch and Hokkien.

Buildings in the town included a city hall, hospital, market, and an orphanage.

Professor Leonard Blussé of the Department of History at the National University of Leiden said that the information the map provides shows that Taiwan in the Dutch era was very international.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-10-23

Taiwan’s national railway company is planning to resume normal service following

The Taiwan Railways Administration is working to resume normal service after a deadly train derailment in northeast Taiwan on Sunday. (Photo by CNA)

Sunday’s deadly train crash in Yilan County.

Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) staff work hard to repair damaged tracks from the derailment of a Puyuma Express service on Sunday in northeastern Taiwan. The accident left 18 dead and 187 injured.

Workers toil to clear debris and lay down new tracks. Repair on electric cables has to wait until the early hours of the morning when power is shut down on the tracks. The TRA said it is likely that normal train services will resume Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, the sixth and eighth cars of the derailed train are being loaded on trucks and taken to the TRA’s Fugang Vehicle Depot for further investigation into the cause of the accident.     [FULL  STORY]

Longtime Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu leaves a legacy of expensive vanity projects alongside failing public services and infrastructure.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/10/23
By: David Evans

Credit: Youtube Screenshot

Kaohsiung recently welcomed another cultural landmark when the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts was inaugurated on Oct. 13. The center, constructed on a former military training facility in Weiwuying Metropolitan Park, took an astonishing 15 years and a jaw-dropping NT$10.7 billion(US$346 million) to complete.

Given such a sizable outlay from public funds, perhaps it was inevitable that the Kaohsiung City Council and the Taiwanese government would go to such great efforts to make a fuss about it.

The National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, we are told, will be crucial in the transformation of Kaohsiung from an industrial port city to a vibrant cultural hub. The center’s chairman, Ju Tzong-ching (朱宗慶), claims it will draw an additional 250,000 visitors a year to the city.

In her speech at the grand opening, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) described it as being “a key part of the southern experience,” “the fruit of [her government’s] space democratization,” and a fine example of how public space is being returned to the people.
[FULL  STORY]

Driver behind deadly derailment of Puyuma Express train in Taiwan’s Yillan blames himself, waives right to a lawyer

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/10/23
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

(By Central News Agency)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — After the deadly derailment of the Puyuma Express train claimed the lives of 18 and injured 190 in eastern Taiwan’s Yilan County on Sunday, the train’s driver in court today blamed himself and waived his right to an attorney, reported UDN.

The 48-year-old driver, identified as Yu Chen-chung (尤振仲), who suffered injuries to his head and chest in the accident, admitted to prosecutors that after a power problem had occurred with the train, he disabled the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system. Yu says he then switched it to manual mode and visual monitoring.

He said he accelerated the speed of the train after passing Luodong station, and when the train approached a curve near Xinma station, it was too late for him to decelerate and he watched helplessly as the train leaped off the tracks.

As Yilan District Chief Prosecutor Chiang Chen-yu (江貞諭) feared there was a danger that Yu would tamper with evidence and could possibly attempt to flee, he filed a motion for his detention. Yu told the court he had no objection to his detention, saying “I do not want to mount a defense,” and waived his right to a lawyer, even after his son offered to find him one.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/10/23
By: Yu Hsiao-han, Worthy Shen and Lee Hsin-Yin 

Taipei, Oct. 23 (CNA) The driver of the Puyuma express train that derailed on Oct. 21 had turned off the automatic train protection (ATP) system, which is the main reason why the train took a curve too fast and crashed, the Yilan District Court said in press release Tuesday.

The driver, Yu Cheng-chung (尤振仲), told prosecutors that he had shut off the system near Daxi Station, which was not one of the stops on the express route, and was operating the train manually because he was having problems accelerating, according to the court.

On Monday night, the Yilan District court denied a motion filed by prosecutors to detain Yu, and he was released Tuesday on bail of NT$500,000 (US$16,141).

In its statement after the detention hearing, the court said Yu told prosecutors that the speedometer on the dashboard was not showing the actual speed of the train, which was traveling from New Taipei to Taitung, and that he had to operate it based on his own experience.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-10-22

Rescue workers toiled through the night searching for signs of life at the site of a fatal

President Tsai (second left) visited train crash victims on Monday (St. Mary’s Hospital Luodong picture)

train crash that took place on Sunday afternoon in eastern Taiwan. As of Monday evening, the death toll was unchanged at 18, with another 187 injured.

Puyuma Express #6432 was traveling through Yilan County, bound for the southeastern city of Taitung when the accident occurred at about 4:50pm on Sunday. All eight of the train’s cars derailed as it rounded a bend and passed through Hsinma Station. Four cars tipped over in the crash.

President Tsai Ing-wen visited injured passengers at four different hospitals in Yilan County on Monday morning. She also gave her condolences to those who lost their lives in the accident.    [FULL  STORY]

The planned referendum on whether to compete as Taiwan in the 2020 Olympics may be a test of support for an independence vote.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/10/22
By: Brian Hioe, 破土 New Bloom

Credit: Brian Hioe

The Formosa Alliance held a rally on Saturday afternoon outside Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) headquarters in Taipei in order to push for a referendum on which name Taiwan will participate under in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The Formosa Alliance was formed by elder Taiwanese independence activists working together with younger activists inclusive of post-Sunflower Movement Third Force parties.

The referendum being pushed by the Formosa Alliance does not explicitly call for Taiwanese independence, just that Taiwan participate in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as “Taiwan” rather than “Chinese Taipei” or some variant thereof. This would be because, despite changes to the Referendum Act in December 2017 lowering the benchmarks needed to hold a nationwide referendum in Taiwan, referendums on the national status of Taiwan or constitution are still not allowed.

Yet while the Formosa Alliance may also hope to appeal to the social mainstream with this broader demand, the clear intent of organizers is to build towards a future referendum on Taiwanese independence.   [FULL  STORY]

The action marks the second time U.S. Navy vessels pass through the waterway within a year. 

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/10/22
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

The photo shows the US Navy vessel DDG-89, which sailed through the Taiwan Strait in July, 2018.（Image credit of navy.mil）

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) confirmed Monday evening that two U.S. warships are moving northward from Eluanbi through Taiwan Strait on Oct. 22.

The passage took place two days after a Reuters report revealing the plan of Washington to dispatch warships to sail through the waters.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/10/22
By: Ku Chuan, Lee Hsin-Yin 

Taipei, Oct. 22 (CNA) Speeding was the main reason behind the deadly derailment of a Puyama express train in northeastern Taiwan on Sunday that has left 18 people dead, according to the head of the Executive Yuan task force investigating the cause of the accident.

Confirming widespread suspicions that the train was going too fast at the time of the accident, Minister without Portfolio Wu Tze-cheng (吳澤成) said the train was traveling at 140 kilometers per hour when the train entered a curve and derailed in Yilan County.

The speed limit for that curved area, which has a radius of 300 meters, is 75 kph, Wu said, but he was unable to explain why the train was operating at such a high speed.

Suspecting that the driver may have been professionally negligent, prosecutors on Monday night filed a motion with the Yilan District Court to detain him for further questioning.    [FULL  STORY]