The China Post
Date: August 23, 2017
By: The China Post

Roller sports was added to the Universiade for the first time this year. On Monday

and Tuesday, Chinese Taipei’s Yang Ho-chen and Li Meng-chu repeatedly cracked open the medal chest, claiming a combined 3 golds and 3 silvers.

Yang has dominated her events, winning three golds to help Chinese Taipei to match its historic best of 7 golds at a Universiade. Yang said she was thrilled about her performance and wanted to help the host team smash the record at her next race. Despite the past two days of intense and physically exhausting competition, she said she felt ready to win.

“I believe I can score well again and prove I’m an athlete who can handle both short and long-distance events,” she said. “My accomplishment belongs not only to me but to my team. I’m grateful to the people behind me, as they enabled me to win.”    [FULL  STORY]

As Taiwanese businesses are unwilling to increase wages for the want to hold onto their profits, they are also complicit in causing themselves to lose demand, and therefore their business sustainability. The government needs to act.

The News Lens
Date: 2017/08/21
By: Justin Hugo

The Basic Wage Deliberation Committee has proposed to increase Taiwan’s minimum wage from NT$21,009 a month this year to only NT$22,000 (US$725) next year, after a meeting earlier this month.

The committee, which is made up of representatives from the government and businesses, as well as from the labor unions and academia, meets every year in the third quarter to discuss whether to raise the minimum wage for the following year. The committee comes under the Ministry of Labor (MOL).

The proposal to raise the minimum wage will now go to the Executive Yuan for its approval before going into effect.    [FULL  STORY]

A list of things you should avoid if you want to stay away from the “ghosts”.

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/08/21
By: Juvina Lai, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – According to Chinese mythology, this year’s “ghost month

”lasts from Aug 22 to September 19. The ghost month is a month when spirits from the lower realm supposedly roam around the world of the living.

The ghost month is the 7th month of the lunar calendar. Most of the Chinese consider the month as an unlucky month and therefore will avoid scheduling major events such as weddings and business deals in this particular month to keep bad things from happening.

As the ghost month begins on the first day of the seventh lunar month, the gates of the hell are opened and an army of hungry ghosts come out to haunt the living, eat good food, drink rice wine and collect ghost money, which is offered by the living by burning the ghost money, according to Chinese mythology.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/08/21
By: Liao Yu-yang, Tyson Lu and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Aug. 21 (CNA) The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) has activated its disaster prevention system after a land warning was issued for Tropical Storm Hato on Monday afternoon to maintain a secure and stable supply of electricity and water during the storm.

An emergency disaster response panel was set up, the ministry said, and all related authorities were notified to closely monitor the storm’s progress.

State-run Taiwan Power Co. spokesman Lin Te-fu (林德福) said the company is checking on the safety of all of its facilities.

Also, all private power plants have been reminded to secure their facilities against harsh weather conditions after a transmission tower used by privately run Ho-Ping power plant was toppled by Typhoon Nesat in late July, taking 1.3 million kilowatts off the grid for two weeks.    [FULL  STORY]

FORGONE:Ko Wen-je thinks that opponents of pension reform have forfeited their legitimacy and disgraced the nation, Taipei City Government spokesman Liu Yi-ting said

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 22, 2017
By: Lee I-chia / Staff reporter

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday maintained that the opponents of

pension reform who disrupted the Summer Universiade opening ceremony were “bastards” as he replied to a comment on Facebook.

Ko first made the remark on Sunday during a news conference after the protesters blocked foreign athletes entering the Taipei Municipal Stadium, where the ceremony was held on Saturday evening.

Ko also on Sunday posted on Facebook an aerial photograph of fireworks lighting up the sky above the stadium during the ceremony, thanking Universiade staff, volunteers, police officers and Taiwanese athletes for helping the ceremony continue smoothly, despite the incident.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: August 22, 2017
By: The China Post

Before the Taipei Universiade kicked off, Chinese Taipei weightlifting heavyweight

Kuo Hsing-chun said repeatedly that she would “not only try to take gold at the Universiade, I will also break my own meet record.” Last night, she did just that, lifting 107 kg in the snatch and 142 kg in the clean and jerk for a total of 249 kg, giving her the women’s 58-kg gold. It was a transcendent moment, as she not only broke the Universiade record but, more importantly, broke the world record on home soil as she lifted the 142 kg with ease.

Despite fellow host team gold medalist hopeful Hsu Shu-ching having withdrawn before the games and with Rio Games champion Srisurat Sukanya from Thailand competing, the venue was swamped with supporters cheering Kuo on. Neither they nor Kuo left disappointed. At the moment after breaking the world record, Kuo shed tears of joy and excitedly hugged her coach Lin Geng-neng as the frenzied cheers from the crowd reverberated around her.

“I thought that competing on home soil would be very stressful, but I was much more relaxed than I imagined I would be,” Kuo said afterward. She had shown remarkable dominance at the start of the event, lifting weights heavier than those of her Thai and North Korean rivals. She kept ahead of them throughout, being successful in every one of her six attempts and never being deterred. That determination was the key to Kuo’s rewriting of the record set by China’s Qiu Hongmei — a record that had stood for a decade.    [FULL  STORY]

‘When it comes to spaces, the older the better.’

The News Lens
Date: 2017/08/20
Editor: Olivia Yang

All photos are courtesy of Good Eye Taipei.

Taiwan has been under the rule of many different regimes. With each shift in power,

part of its architectural heritage has been torn down or repurposed. Shifts in the nation’s economical center also caused once prosperous areas to become uninhabited and desolate.

Fortunately, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in the local culture. Through civilian or governmental efforts, many old houses have been reborn into new businesses or cultural spaces. For example, the “Urban Regeneration Station” (URS) project, launched by the Taipei City Urban Regeneration Office, invites NGOs to revamp and enliven unused spaces.

“Good Eye Taipei,” a new bilingual Taipei city guide, shares six regenerated old spaces in the city to visit.    [FULL  STORY]

CWB issues sea warning for Typhoon Hato

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/08/21
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) at 11:30 p.m. on

Sunday issued a sea warning for the waters off southern Taiwan as well as the Bashi Channel as Typhoon Hato nears, and if the storm maintains its present course, the CWB will issue a land warning by noon on Monday.

As of 11:30 p.m. Sunday, the 13th typhoon of the year, Typhoon Hato, was located 20.1. degrees North and 126.1 degrees East, which is about 570 kilometers east-southeast of Taiwan’s southernmost tip of Eluanbi, and was moving in a westerly direction toward the Bashi Channel at a speed of 16 kilometers per hour.

It was carrying winds of 64.8 kilometers per hour, with gusts of up to 90 kilometers per hour, according to CWB data.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/08/20

The following is the medal table for the top 10 countries:

1. N. Korea — 3 gold, 2 silver (total: 5)

2. Japan — 3 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze (4)

3. South Korea — 2 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze (6)

4. United States — 1 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze (6)

5. Russia — 1 gold, 1 silver, 5 bronze (7)

6. Ukraine — 1 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze (4)

7. Italy — 1 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze (3)
[FULL MEDAL COUNT]

’1992 CONSENSUS’:The former vice president promised to boost the economy, while the KMT congress voted to rescind a proposal to negotiate a peace pact with China

Taipei Times
Date: Aug 21, 2017
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter, in TAICHUNG

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) was inaugurated

yesterday during the party’s 20th National Congress in Taichung, and the party’s platform was amended to rescind a proposal to seek a peace treaty with China.

In his inaugural address, the former vice president stressed the so-called “1992 consensus” and pledged to reconnect the party with the nation’s young people and boost the economy to revive the party.

He reiterated the “original wording” of the “1992 consensus”: that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait should adhere to the ‘one China’ principle, but both sides agree to make its own interpretation of what that means in oral form.”

“On the basis of the 1992 consensus,’ we will continue to oppose Taiwanese independence and promote Chinese culture to facilitate reconciliation and mutual respect between two sides of the Taiwan Strait,” Wu said.    [FULL  STORY]