Taiwanese win 29 gold medals, 17 silver medals and 6 special awards

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/07/08
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – An 88-year-old man who took part for the first time was one of 29

Taiwanese gold-medal winners at a creativity fair in Tokyo, reports said Saturday.

The 31st edition of the World Genius Convention and Education Expo also saw 17 Taiwanese win silver and six win a special prize, putting Taiwan at the top of the ranking per country.

Hsieh Fa-lien (謝發連) studied at a middle school in Taiwan when the island was still a Japanese colony. Watching airplanes and fixing scooters were evidence of his early interest in mechanics.

The invention that brought him gold in his first-ever international competition was a rust-free piece of machinery that you can put under a pillow to regulate its height and angle, reports said. In addition, the metal feels cool and fresh, which makes it suitable for Taiwan’s hot summers, according to Hsieh.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/07/08
By: Cheng Chi-feng and S.C. Chang

Kaohsiung, July 8 (CNA) A debt-ridden man admitted on Saturday that he deliberately starved his

mother and elder brother to death, finding himself unable to look after them after they had strokes and became incapacitated.

The man, 50, has been in hiding since June 29, when police found the bodies of his 78-year-old mother and 55-year-old brother dead inside their family home in Fengshan District, Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan.

Police found a confession, left by the man, surnamed Kung, admitting to his responsibility for the crime because he could no longer stand the mental and economic pressure of supporting his mother and brother. In the note, he also asked that he be sentenced to death.

A police investigation revealed that the two brothers were not married.

The older brother suffered a stroke 10 years ago and was taken care of by his mother until she had a stroke herself in March when both were sent to a nursing home.

Kung, who worked as a glass cutter in Tainan, could not afford to pay for the nursing home and so quit his job to take care of his mother and brother himself at the family home in early June.
[FULL  STORY]

‘INSIDE INFORMATION’:Taiwan Policemen Association official Chen Chih-chieh said that police preparations can reveal whether the president would be in a motorcade

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 09, 2017
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

High supporter numbers, leaks in the police department and assistance from former police officers

are enabling protesters to run effective “guerrilla” campaigns, despite increased security around President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), pension reform opponents said yesterday, adding that “mobile human wall” tactics to keep them away from Tsai’s motorcade would not work.

Protesters have promised to “shadow” Tsai following the passage of pension reforms last month and have had some success in breaking through an increased police presence around the president, including briefly halting her motorcade outside National Defense University in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) on Thursday last week.

“There are only two roads in and out of the university, so where could she go? The police cannot change the roads,” said Keng Chi-wen (耿繼文), a former director of the National Police Agency’s Internal Affairs Office, who has been one of the most prominent former police officers participating in protests.

Protesters stood along both sides of Zhongyang N Road, moving in front of Tsai’s motorcade as it approached the university entrance before being pushed aside by police.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: July 8, 2017
By: The China Post

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said Friday he had repudiated a bid by a

Chinese official to downgrade the status of Taiwan’s president during the Summer Universiade.

The international sporting event for college students opens in mid-August with a ceremonial address by President Tsai Ing-wen.

Ko said Friday that a mainland Chinese official had visited Taiwan in April and asked him to arrange for Tsai to not speak onstage.

Ko told reporters that he had said, “If she does not go onstage, I will go offstage (resign).”

The official then asked for Tsai to be introduced as Taiwan’s “leader” in lieu of “president,” Ko said, adding that he had again objected.

He told local media that he had conveyed his views to the International University Sports Federation, the governing body of the Summer Universiade games.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-07-07

The majority Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will hold events next week to mark the 30th

anniversary of the end of martial law in Taiwan. They include a music festival and the screening of a film about the party’s history. The events will kick off next Friday in Taichung.

Thirty-eight years of martial law ended in 1987 under the late president Chiang Ching-kuo. Chiang’s Kuomintang (KMT) imposed the ban in May 1949 as KMT troops retreated to Taiwan in the last stages of the Chinese civil war.

DPP secretary-general Hung Yao-fu said the lifting of martial law was a milestone in Taiwan’s democratic development. Hung said martial law was lifted not as a friendly gesture by those in power at the time. He said it was rather the result of the struggle and sacrifice of democracy activists.

Music will feature prominently in the events because many songs were banned by the KMT at that time for being “politically sensitive.” Hung said the DPP wants to use music to pay tribute to those who have contributed to Taiwan’s democracy.    [FULL  STORY]

Group says map was a mistake, has removed it from site

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/07/07
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – In a move likely to infuriate Taiwanese who donated an estimated total of more than NT$100 million (US$3.2 million) to Greenpeace, the environmental action group included Taiwan in a map of China, reports said Friday.

The map was titled “Predicted Distribution of Coal Power Plants in 2020 by Baseline Water Stress” and showed China, Tibet, the island of Hainan, Taiwan and disputed islands in the South China Sea as one entity.

Taiwan Association for Human Rights chief Chiu Yubin (邱毓斌) said that even though Greenpeace received so many donations from members of the public in Taiwan, it still depicted the island as part of China’s territory. The environmental group comes to Taiwan to rake in the cash, but then it steps on Taiwan’s dignity, Chiu wrote.

In a response, Greenpeace explained it was an independent and politically neutral environmental organization, and that the map was a mistake by the official website and had been removed. Its donations were spent on domestic items such as green energy and ocean fishing, the group said.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/07/07
By: Liu Chien-ban and Ko Lin

Taipei, July 7 (CNA) A Chinese graduate student studying at National Taiwan University (NTU) was

found dead in his campus dormitory room on Friday, and was suspected to have suffered cardiac arrest, Taipei police said.

Identified by his last name “Xu” (徐), the student was found by his classmate lying on his bed. The classmate was asked by one of Xu’s professors to check on him because he hadn’t been able to reach him, the police said.

Officers who arrived at the dormitory around noon found Xu already dead, presumably for over 24 hours.

Prescriptions of his heart medication were also found on the table.    [FULL  STORY]

PETITION, FILMS:The Taiwan Association for Human Rights said that the events are to remind people that rights lawyers in China are paying the price for democracy

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 08, 2017
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

Democracy campaigners yesterday announced plans to hold events tomorrow to draw attention to a

2015 Chinese crackdown on human rights lawyers and renewed calls for Beijing to release Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲) and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波).

Human rights groups and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) at a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei called for the release of Wu Gan (吳淦), Jiang Tianyong (江天勇), Wang Quanzhang (王全璋) and other Chinese lawyers imprisoned following a crackdown on July 9, 2015, which saw hundreds detained.

“The 2015 crackdown shocked lawyers, non-governmental organizations and Taiwanese society in general,” Taiwanese China Human Rights Lawyers Support Network secretary Chou Ching-chang (周慶昌) said.

“We hope these events on the second anniversary of the crackdown will prompt the Chinese government to respond,” Chou said.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: July 7, 2017
By: The China Post

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Change could be in the cards for the “one fixed day off, one flexible rest day”

workweek, which took effect in January.
The Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily reported Friday that the Ministry of Labor was evaluating the matter of amending the workweek law.

The ministry aims to write up a bill by next month and to deliver it to the Executive Yuan for consideration by the end of August, according to Apple Daily, which did not name its source.

Labor Ministry Secretary-General Chen Ming-jen (陳明仁) denied the report, saying there were no plans at present for legal amendments.

Meanwhile Friday, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) sat down with a business lobby to “collect viewpoints” on the embattled workweek law.    [FULL  STORY]

National Security Bureau director-general Peng Sheng-chu said in parliament in March that Chinese espionage is ‘more serious than before.’

The News Lens
Date: 2017/07/06
By: Agence France-Presse

A Chinese graduate from one of Taiwan’s top universities was charged with espionage on Thursday

as prosecutors accused him of attempting to recruit spies for Beijing.

The indictment comes as officials warn of growing intelligence threats from China at a time of increasingly frosty ties between Taipei and Beijing.

China still sees Taiwan as part of its territory to be brought back into its fold even though Taiwan has been self-governing since 1949.

Relations have worsened since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) came to power last May.

The Taipei District Prosecutors office said Thursday a man surnamed Zhou – who came to Taiwan to study in 2012 — violated the National Security Act.    [FULL  STORY]