Taiwan News  
Date: 2018/07/15
By:  Central News Agency

Taipei, July 15 (CNA) Over 34,000 infertile women in Taiwan used assisted reproductive technology to try to give birth in 2016, with women aged 35 or over opting for the technology growing in number, according to a report by the Health Promotion Administration (HPA).

According to the HPA report, 34,486 infertile women tried to get pregnant using artificial means, including 99.4 percent through in vitro fertilization, in 2016, the last year for which data is available.

Of that number, 23,575 were women aged 35 or over seeking to give birth for the first time. That was up 22 percent from 2015 and accounted for 68.4 percent of the total group of women looking to assisted reproductive technology to get pregnant.

Dramatic increases in demand were seen across all age brackets, the HPA report showed.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/07/15
By: Hsu Hsiao-han and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, July 15 (CNA) Over 500 trucks and motorcycles blocked the road outside the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and nearby streets Sunday to protest a recently passed amendment that would demand higher emission standards for vehicles.

Chanting slogans of “anti-discrimination” and “wanting to survive,” the protesters, mostly owners and drivers of aged diesel-fuel trucks, were angered by an EPA policy they said would lead to the elimination of vehicles produced 10 or more years ago.

“Old cars are innocent,” roared the protesters, gathered by the Left Party and a national self-help association of aged truck and motorcycle owners, saying they were strongly opposed to the practice of “forcible elimination.”

Among revisions to the Air Pollution Control Act passed on June 25 was one that said vehicles 10 years or older would be subject to stricter emission standards, without detailing the new standards that would apply or when they would be implemented.    [FULL  STORY]

ACHIEVEMENTS: The DPP government has reformed the nation’s pension, tax and judicial systems, despite challenges, the president told the DPP National Congress

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 16, 2018
By: Lin Chia-nan  /  Staff reporter

The nine-in-one local elections in November will be a battle between

proponents and opponents of reform, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said at the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) National Congress yesterday.

The annual meeting took place at the Grand Hotel in Taipei and was titled “Promoting Reforms for the Next Generation.”

The meeting focused on the election of new members to the party’s Central Standing and Central Advisory committees, and rallying support for its candidates in the Nov. 24 race, DPP spokesperson Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said.

Despite challenges, the DPP administration has over the past two years strived to reform the nation’s pension, tax and judicial systems, and amended the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) and the Company Act (公司法) , Tsai, who is also DPP chairperson, said in her opening speech.
[FULL  STORY]

ARTS AND CRAFTS: About 100 ivory products, mostly seals and small sculptures, have been sold annually in Taiwan over the past few years, mostly by art dealers in Taipei

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 15, 2018
By: Lin Chia-nan  /  Staff reporter

The sale of ivory products is to be banned in Taiwan from the beginning of

2020 in a bid to protect African elephants, whose number continues to decline due to illegal hunting for elephant tusks, the Council of Agriculture’s Forestry Bureau announced yesterday.

The number of African elephants has fallen from about 508,000 in 2006 to 415,000 in 2015, and their existence is primarily threatened by poaching, the bureau said, citing the African Elephant Status Report 2016 published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

According to the report, African elephants might become extinct in 20 years if their number continues to decline at that rate, the bureau said.

Many nations in 2016 called for the closure of ivory markets to protect African elephants at the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, it said.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan English News
Date: July 14, 2018 
By: Phillip Charlier  

Firefighters in Taichung City broke the glass of a claw machine this afternoon, after a three year-old boy climbed into the machine and became trapped.

Emergency services received a call from the boy’s distressed mother at 1:07pm. The woman told dispatchers that her son had crawled into the machine when she wasn’t paying attention.

A firetruck, one ambulance, and 8 personnel were dispatched to scene.

Firefighters tried to contact the machine’s owner, then contacted a locksmith in the neighborhood. The locksmith wasn’t able to open the machine quickly enough, so firefighters in the end broke the glass.
[FULL  STORY]

One year after his death in captivity, the Nobel laureate and prominent Chinese dissident was commemorated in a small gathering near Taipei

The News Lens
Date: 2018/07/14
By: Nick Aspinwall

On the one year anniversary of his death, a small ceremony dedicated to the Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo was held on Friday in Taipei.

A sculpture was unveiled in Taipei’s City Hall Park, just a stone’s throw away from Taipei 101. The commemoration was held three days after his widow, Liu Xia, arrived in Berlin after living under effective house arrest for eight years.

The ceremony was spearheaded by Wu’er Kaixi, a student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests who later became a protégé of Liu. As dusk fell over the park, Wu’er spoke of his shock when Chinese authorities announced Liu’s liver cancer diagnosis in May of last year. Liu passed away weeks later amid international cries that China was denying adequate medical care to the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

A small crowd of a few dozen onlookers attended the gathering, which was lightly publicized but had been planned for months by Wu’er’s organization, Friends of Liu Xiaobo. Rather than a statue, the sculpture, designed by artist Cheng Ai-hua, consists of an image of Liu’s face, an open book adorned with a golden rose, and an empty chair, which Cheng said represented the seat left empty when Liu was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize in absentia.    [FULL  STORY]

Worker and driver’s girlfriend died in the tunnel crash

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/07/14
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The driver of a Lamborghini who crashed into a truck inside a tunnel, leading to the death of two people, visited the memorial service for one of the victims Saturday to express his regret.

In the early morning of July 7, Yu Han-ning (游瀚甯), 24, drove a rented white Lamborghini into a tunnel in Taipei City at high speed. He lost control over the vehicle, which first slammed into a wall and then into two stationary trucks used by three workers to replace lights inside the tunnel.

As a result, both his passenger, a 27-year-old woman surnamed Liu (劉), and one of the workers, Chang Sung-hsiang (張松祥), 49, died on site, reports said.

Chang’s family held his memorial service on Saturday afternoon, and Yu appeared in a wheelchair, accompanied by both his parents, and stayed for about an hour before apologizing to the family, the Central News Agency reported.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/07/14
By: Chen Wei-ting and Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, July 14 (CNA) The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) on

Saturday announced rule changes that will require Taiwanese carriers traveling over oceans to report their position every 15 minutes under certain conditions — a requirement triggered by the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight in 2014.

The revised Aircraft Flight Operation Regulations stipulate that starting Nov. 8, all operations of aircraft with a takeoff mass of 45,500 kilograms flying oceanic routes will have to apply aircraft tracking on a 15-minute interval, compared to a 60-minute interval at present, the CAA said.

The new rule will make it possible for airlines to track more closely the latitude, longitude and altitude of their aircraft, said Clark Lin (林俊良), director of CAA’s Flight Standards Division.

Carriers will also have to make sure that the position of an aircraft can be determined at least once a minute when in distress, such as when there is smoke in the cabin or engine failure, Lin said.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-07-13

Taiwanese composer Lin Chia-ying has won the 2018 Royal Philharmonic

Society (RPS) Composition Prize. She is the first person from Taiwan to earn the recognition from the UK-based RPS in its 70-year history.

Born in 1990, Lin studied composition at Taipei National University of the Arts for her undergraduate program. She later earned a master’s degree in the UK and is currently completing her studies at the prestigious Santa Cecilia Conservatory of Music in Rome.

Lin’s compositions began earning top prizes in major competitions in 2015. Her first win was third prize at the First International Jean Sibelius Composition Competition. She has since followed it up with top prizes from competitions in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Lin expressed gratitude for the prize on Thursday. She also announced that she will be writing music for the RPS commission and that her piece will premiere in the 2019 Philharmonia’s Music of Today series, at the Royal Festival Hall in London.    [SOURCE]

The News Lens
Date: 2018/07/13
By: David Green

Taiwan Startup Stadium presented a high quality and diverse line up of startup talent, starting with fintech, AI and loyalty app offerings.

Eight of Taiwan’s best and brightest startups presented to a full house to wrap up RISE 2018 in Hong Kong last night at the Taiwan Startup Stadium (TSS) Demo Day.

Garage Academy played host to more than 200 people to learn more about Taiwan’s startup excellence and to hear short sharp pitches from the island’s sharpest new talent.

In introducing, TSS General Manager Holly Harrington painted an enticing picture of Taiwan’s increasingly dynamic startup ecosystem, picking out a list of star companies, from the now defunct Wretch blogging platform that was ubiquitous until Yahoo closed it in 2013, to more recent luminaries such as AI ad targeting platform Appier and photo editing app PicColage, the latter of which now has an eye-popping 170 million downloads.

She also said Taiwan is now seeing Taiwanese angels such as YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, both of whom are recent investors in The News Lens, return to the island as angel investors.
[FULL  STORY]