NEW DEVICES:The nascent adoption of artificial intelligence is presenting TSIA members with enormous business opportunities, the TSMC cochief executive said

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 16, 2017
By: Lisa Wang  /  Staff reporter, in HSINCHU

Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is bracing for escalating global competition amid rising

protectionism and the ascension of China, Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA, 台灣半導體協會) director-general C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday.

Wei made the remarks during his opening speech at the annual TSIA meeting in Hsinchu.

Wei also serves as cochief executive officer of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and is to become the sole chief executive of the chip supplier to Apple Inc in June next year in the company’s latest succession plan.

TSIA members are being presented with enormous business opportunities primarily from the nascent adoption of artificial intelligence, which is expected to be widely applied to virtual reality and augmented reality devices, the Internet of Things and self-driving cars, Wei said.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: November 15, 2017
By: Rita Cheng and Kuan-lin Liu

WASHINGTON (CNA) – The issue of Taiwan remains a sensitive topic that could result in

conflict between China and the U.S, scholars on Sino-U.S. relations said during a conference on China’s rising power on Tuesday.

At the second annual “China Power” conference hosted by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Graham Allison, a professor from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Evan Medeiros, managing director of the Eurasia Group’s Asia department, debated whether there was a growing risk of war between the U.S. and China.

While the two took different positions on the issue, one thing they did agree on is that there is a risk of war between the two countries, and that Taiwan constitutes one of the key risk factors.

According to Allison, who took the affirmative position in the debate, Taiwan remains a factor that could cause a clash between the U.S. and China even if the North Korea issue is more pressing.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan’s political environment is making it more attractive for international students.

The News Lens
Date: 2017/11/14
By: Matthew Fulco

The global craze to learn Chinese has moved in tandem with China’s rise, with the

number of students surging since the mid-2000s. Even Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s five-year-old daughter Arabella has been part of the trend, enabling her to show off her Mandarin skills by singing and reciting poetry for Chinese President Xi Jinping during his state visit to the United States in April.

Globally, the number of people learning Chinese as a second language has more than trebled from 30 million in 2004 to 100 million today, according to an October opinion piece in China’s state-run China Daily. The PRC has benefited considerably from this boom. “With the rise of China’s international influence, the Chinese language will enter more classrooms in foreign countries, helping young people around the world better understand the country,” the China Daily article states.

For Taiwan, Mandarin’s surging popularity has been a two-edged sword. Rising interest in the language has boosted enrollment in Chinese-language courses here. With its cleaner air and friendly people, the island offers a more inspiring environment to learn one of the world’s hardest languages than smoggy mainland metropolises.
[FULL  STORY]

The spokesperson for MOFA said the accusation was “groundless’ and “simply not true”.

Taiwan News 
Date: 2017/11/14
By: Teng Pei-ju, Taiwan News, Staff Reporter

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Two American women, Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava,

embarked on a journey on a sailboat from Hawaii to Tahiti in May, but became stranded at sea after the boat was damaged by a storm. It was not until five months later that they met a Taiwanese fishing vessel which then contacted the U.S. Coast Guard to take them home.

However, the story took a dramatic turn on November 8 as the two women accused the Taiwanese fishermen of trying to kill them.

Andrew Lee (李憲章), spokesperson for Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, denied the allegation on Tuesday and said the accusation made by the two American women was “groundless” and “simply not true.”

Lee told the media that the Taiwanese fishing vessel ‘Feng-chun 66’ (豐春66號) encountered two stranded American women on October 24 while operating on high seas off the Midway Atoll.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/11/14
By Christie Chen and Yu Hsiao-han, CNA staff reporters 

“I am willing to exchange my Presidential Cultural Award for the right of gay people to

get married,” long-time gay rights activist Chi Chia-wei (祁家威) said last month after it was announced that he had been granted the prestigious award.

Having fought decades in Taiwan for the legalization of same-sex marriage and other gay rights, 59-year-old Chi was named on Oct. 13 as the recipient of the 9th Presidential Cultural Awards in the social reform category.

“He has always firmly promoted equal gay rights, and (was given the award) because he filed a request for a constitutional interpretation that allowed same-sex marriage to be protected at the constitutional level, and allowed Taiwan to become a pioneer in Asia on the issue and a more progressive country,” according to the General Association of Chinese Culture (GACC), which hands out the biennial award.    [FULL  STORY]

‘CONCLAVE’:The ‘China Times’ ran a story on the minesweeper program without verifying it, the Presidential Office said, demanding a correction and an apology

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 15, 2017
By: Sean Lin and Chen Wei-han  /  Staff reporters

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) yesterday accused the

Presidential Office of pressuring the Ministry of National Defense to pay Ching Fu Shipbuilding Co (慶富造船) NT$2.4 billion (US$79.52 million) months before the budget was set to be allocated so the company could carry out phase three of its plan to build minesweepers for the navy.

At a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, Ma played a video showing Ching Fu vice president Chen Chih-wei (陳志偉) apparently telling Kaohsiung Marine Bureau Director-General Wang Tuan-jen (王端仁) and Fisheries Agency officials during a meeting on Oct. 7 last year that the ministry had initially turned down his request for payment and told him to wait until March, when the budget was to be approved.

Chen said in the video that he took the matter to the Presidential Office, as the ministry should have made the payment in September last year.

“Two days later, the Ministry of National Defense called me and said that they had received the money, which shows that the Presidential Office fully supports the project. Otherwise, it would turn out to be very ugly,” Chen said in the recording. [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: November 14, 2017
By: Chiang Chin-ye and Y.F. Low

WASHINGTON (CNA) – U.S. President Donald Trump made clear to Beijing last week

that Washington will not end arms sales to Taiwan and will continue to furnish it with defensive weapons, a conservative online media outlet in the United States has reported.

Citing a senior White House official who took part in Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing, the Washington Free Beacon said the Chinese side “obliquely” raised its opposition to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan during talks between the two presidents.

There were no discussions of issuing a fourth U.S.-China communique on Taiwan or talk of a “grand bargain” with China to resolve the Taiwan issue, the official told the Free Beacon.

“The president spoke of our one China policy based on the three communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act, so we’re going to continue providing defensive weapons commensurate with our obligations under the law,” the official was quoted as saying.
[FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date:: 2017/11/13
By: David Green

After 2016 changes to the Labor Standards Act drew criticism for inflexibility and high

costs, the latest round of changes give too much power back to bosses, leaving shift workers such as nurses and drivers particularly vulnerable.

New amendments to the Labor Standards Act (LSA) rubber stamped by the Executive Yuan last Thursday (Nov. 9) sliced open class divisions in Taiwanese society, pitting workers and their unions against corporate interests.

The new amendments, drawn up by a team led by Premier William Lai (賴清德) and now submitted to the legislature for review, are a necessary tonic in light of widespread discontent among employees and their bosses over the last round of changes, introduced just a year ago. The amendments are expected to pass the Legislative Yuan, in which the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holds a majority.   [FULL  STORY]

A woman in Chiayi pressed charges against his 19-year-old son for stealing her money from her bank account, saying she wanted to give her son a lesson.

Taiwan News 
Date: 2017/11/13
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—A woman in Chiayi pressed charges against his 19-year-old

son for stealing her money from her bank account, saying she wanted to give her son a lesson.

According to a news release issued by the second precinct of Chiayi City Police Bureau on Monday, police received a report from a 59-year-old woman surnamed Chiu, saying that when she withdrew money from her savings in her Post Office account, she found some money in her account had been stolen.

Acting upon the report, police studied surveillance video around the post office to find out the suspect who allegedly stole the money.

The next day, police asked the woman to the station to identify the suspect in a screen shot. The woman immediately recognized that the suspect was her son, and sadly told police that she has a comfortable, middle-class family and has attached much importance to her son’s education. She told police she had never thought her son would have stolen money from her bank account, which much disappointed her.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/11/13
By: Joseph Yeh

Taipei, Nov. 13 (CNA) The Republic of China (Taiwan) Air Force said Monday that it has

detected a signal similar to what would be sent from the black box of the Mirage-2000 fighter jet that went missing off northeastern Taiwan last Tuesday and has yet to be found.

The Air Force said that following a week-long search, its rescue team detected a signal that could have been sent by the flight data recorder (FDR) of the missing aircraft. FDR is more commonly known as the black box.

The signal was detected in the vicinity of where the jet disappeared from radar screens on the night of Nov. 7, but the military was still not sure it was indeed sent by the Mirage-2000 fighter.

Air Force Lieutenant General Chang Yen-ting (張延廷) told CNA that the signal’s wavelength was similar to that sent by the black box of a Mirage-2000.  [FULL  STORY]