Railway lines and mountain roads hit by landslides

Taiwan News
Date; 2017/06/17
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Torrential rain played havoc with traffic around the country Saturday, closing

down one runway at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport for hours and interrupting roads and rail tracks in other regions.

Landslide alerts were out for many mountainous regions, with the plum rain not expected to leave until Wednesday.

Taiwan’s main international airport shut down its southern runway for more than five hours during the afternoon while repair work was executed. Around 2 p.m., two damaged areas were found about 100 cm by 80 cm and 60 cm by 40 cm in size, officials said.

The airport sent a team to fix the problem, a task which was completed around 6 p.m. The situation was deemed safe enough to reopen the runway for use at 7:30 pm., but takeoffs and landings had continued normally on the other runway, so traffic was not really disrupted, officials said.
[FULL  STORY]

Fiocus Taiwan
Date: 2017/06/17
By: Chang Jung-hsiang and Y.F. Low

Taipei, June 17 (CNA) A research team at Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) has proven

the efficacy of a zinc finger-like protein in restoring memory deficits, which suggests it has the potential to treat Alzheimer’s disease.

The team was led by Chang Nan-shan (張南山), director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Sze Chun-I (司君一), director of the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, and Kuo Yu-min (郭余民), a professor in the department.

According to the team, Alzheimer’s disease is mainly the result of cell death and tissue loss in the brain that is believed to be caused by plaques and tangles building up in the nerve cells.

In their research, the scientists found that Zfra, a naturally occurring 31-amino-acid zinc finger-like protein, can effectively reduce plaque aggregation and tangle formation.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: June 17, 2017
By: CNA

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said Saturday it has set up a disaster response

center and put military personnel, vehicles and apparatus on stand-by as strong torrential rain that has drenched Taiwan since early this week continue to pummel the island.

Some 18,000 military personnel are on stand-by, while more than 3,900 vehicles and boats are ready for action, the ministry said.

In addition, 35 military personnel have already been deployed in the disaster-prone areas of Namasia, Taoyuan and Liouguei districts in the mountainous part of southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City to help with possible evacuations, it said.

The plum rain that has been affecting Taiwan since Monday started to intensify on Friday, introducing torrential rainfall to most parts of the country.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan’s motorists wait at the intersection of civility and chaos for effective law enforcement to change from red to green

The News Lens
Date: 2017/06/16
By: Wayne Pajunen

Usually well-mannered Taiwanese are widely recognised as friendly people, ever willing to help with

directions often even walking a lost traveler to their destination. However, when essential laws are not enforced a frightening number of customarily considerate Jekylls transform into terrorizing Hydes.

Aspects of Taiwanese society are analogous to the 19th century Scottish novella “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.” A classic tale described as, “An examination of the duality of human nature, an inner struggle between good and evil or civilization versus barbarism.”

Robert Louis Stevenson’s good-natured Dr. Jekyll is transformed to dangerous self-indulgent Mr. Hyde by a well-intended serum gone wrong. Likewise, what may have originally been well-meaning indifferent applications of Taiwan’s laws have only condoned lawlessness fomenting uncivilized Hyde-like alter egos detrimental to civil society.

Taiwanese and Canadians are generally considered friendly peoples and both nations also share well-maintained roads but when driving in Taiwan a chilling divergence of experience prevails.
[FULL  STORY]

A Kyrgyz IT expert, three U.S. professors and one French academic are the beneficiaries

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/06/16
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – An IT expert from Kyrgyzstan, a French professor and three professors from

the United States will receive Taiwanese citizenship without having to forego their own nationality under a new scheme to attract foreign professionals, the Ministry of Interior (MOI) said Friday.

Until now, most of the beneficiaries of the changes have been missionaries with decades of social, educational or medical work in often remote villages under their belt.

Since December 21, high-level professionals from the domains of technology, economy, education, arts and culture, sports, religion, democracy and human rights can apply for a Taiwanese passport without having to give up their own original nationality.

Other foreigners cannot combine Taiwanese and original citizenships. After complaints that some could become stateless if their application for a Taiwanese passport was turned down after they gave up their own, the government changed the rules to allow them to show proof of having relinquished their original citizenship after having been approved for a Taiwanese passport.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/06/16
By: Chen Cheng-wei and Ko Lin

Taipei, June 16 (CNA) Taiwan has maintained its top spot in the Global Open Data Index for a second

consecutive year, according to the latest index released by Open Knowledge International on Thursday.

In the annual index that measures how open governments are in providing key information, Taiwan was ranked first among 94 countries and areas this year, followed by Australia and France.

They were followed by Great Britain in fourth and Norway in fifth, with Finland, Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and Northern Ireland rounding out the top 10.

The next highest ranked countries in Asia were Japan at 16th, Singapore at 18th and Hong Kong at 24th. China was not covered in the survey.    [FULL  STORY]

TAIWAN TRAVEL ACT:The US allows authoritarian PRC leaders to visit Washington, but shuns Taiwan’s democratically elected officials, FAPA president Peter Chen said

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 17, 2017
By: Staff writer, with CNA

A bill that seeks to encourage visits between Taiwan and the US at all levels was on Thursday passed

by a US House of Representatives subcommittee in the first step toward its legislation.

The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific unanimously passed the Taiwan travel act bill, which was initiated by US Representative Steve Chabot, and cosponsored by US representatives Brad Sherman and Ed Royce, chairman of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

“The United States government should encourage visits between the United States and Taiwan at all levels,” the bill states.

It says that since the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) in 1979, ties between Taiwan and the US have suffered from insufficient high-level communication due to the self-imposed restrictions that the US maintains on visits by high-ranking officials.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: June 16, 2017

TAIPEI, Taiwan — An exhibition featuring historic stamps and artifacts kicked off Friday in Tainan,

revisiting the five-month period of “the Republic of Formosa,” also known as “the Republic of Taiwan” on the island in 1895.

The five-day exhibition is running at the Old Japanese Patriotic Women’s Association building, where a total of 70 exhibits are on display, said the Chunghwa Post Co. The exhibits include rare collections from three stamp collectors, it added.

Historic stamps used in the Republic of Formosa have rarely been displayed publicly, and only a few were on display at the World Stamp Championship Exhibition in Taipei last year, Chunghwa Post said, adding that the Tainan exhibition is the first to showcase an array of stamps and artifacts from that period.

It chose to hold the event in Tainan because the southern city was the last base of the Republic of Formosa, it said.    [FULL  STORY]

Check out the latest episode of The News Lens Radio.

The News Lens
Date: 2017/06/15

“My mom saw the picture I posted on Facebook, kissing and holding hands with my boyfriend. She said it was like I was using a knife to tear her heart open.”

This episode is a special cross-cast, co-produced by The News Lens and Ketagalan Media.

We take a close look at what it is like to be gay in Taiwan today and discuss whether the advance

towards marriage equality actually reflects deeper progress across Taiwan society.

On May 24, after decades of protest by the LGBT community in Taiwan, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that laws banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. While the court’s decision didn’t immediately legalize gay marriage, it gave Taiwan’s government two years to implement the ruling, and said if the law isn’t changed within two years, same-sex couples could get married regardless.

In the wake of the Court’s decision, Taiwan was heralded for being one of the most progressive countries in Asia. While this may be true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Taiwan society is particularly advanced when it comes to accepting people from the LGBT community.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/06/15
By George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)–A rescue team set out on Thursday for a mission to search and rescue a

mountaineer who became trapped in high mountains with a broken leg and no food to eat after a 30-day expedition of hiking alone through a treacherous area in the Central Mountains in northeastern Taiwan.

The mountaineer surnamed Lee had been hiking from a giant rock, which is said to be a sacred place for the Atayal tribe, near the border of Nantou County and Hualien County, towards a deserted Japanese-built logging railway station called Ha-Lun (哈崙) in the deep mountains of Hualien County, according to a rescuer nicknamed “Snow Ram.” The route cuts through a densely vegetated and rarely visited area and there is no trail to follow, Snow Ram said, adding that it is sheer adventure.

Lee has the experience of completing a 47-day Central Mountain Range expedition; this time, even though he brought a GPS device with him, it was washed away by floods as he encountered days of torrential rains during this trip, according to Snow Ram.    [FULL  STORY]