Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/04/27
By: Chen Wei-ting, Yu Hsiao-han and Elaine Hou

Taipei, April 27 (CNA) The cancer risk in a Changhua village has been confirmed to

be linked to a naphtha cracking plant in neighboring Yunlin County, according to the results of a research project published Thursday.

The research focuses on residents of Changhua’s Dacheng Township and neighboring Chutang Township, north of Formosa Plastics Group’s sixth naphtha cracking plant.

It was found that the risk of cancer in Dacheng’s Taishi village, about eight kilometers from the plant in Yunlin’s Mailiao Township, was one in 1,000 between 1999 and 2007, while the rate rose to 8.44 in 1,000 for the 2008-2014 period, the research team said at a news conference.    [FULL  STORY]

FINAL VERDICT:The Intellectual Property Court said there was no proof that Wei Ying-chun ordered his employees to relax food inspections and dropped the related charges

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 28, 2017
By: Wang Ting-chuan and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Intellectual Property Court yesterday sentenced former Ting Hsin Group (頂新

集團) senior executive Wei Ying-chun (魏應充) to two years in prison over a tainted oil scandal.

The ruling is final and cannot be appealed, the court said.

Wei was charged with providing false information that misled consumers and ordering the group’s employees to adulterate edible oils.

In November 2013, Ting Hsin Oil and Fat Industrial Co (頂新製油實業) was found to have adulterated its olive oil products with oils from Chang Chi Foodstuff Factory Co (大統長基食品公司), which had a month earlier been accused of mixing olive oil with sunflower seed oil, cottonseed oil and chlorophyllin.

An e-mail retrieved from the hard drive of a group employee’s computer during a search in 2013 showed that Wei, who was at the time the president of Wei Chuan Foods Corp (味全食品), a subsidiary of Ting Hsin, gave executive orders to mix oils used in Wei Chuan Foods products.

The products, branded as 100 percent pure olive oil, contained only 1 percent olive oil, with the rest consisting of palm oil and about 1 percent grapeseed oil.
[FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: April 28, 2017
By: Stephanie Chao

TAIPEI, Taiwan — President Tsai Ing-wen has said a direct phone call with U.S.

President Donald Trump could take place again, in an interview with Reuters news agency published Thursday, nearly five months after the leaders’ first call shattered diplomatic precedent.

She also urged political rival mainland China to step up and fulfill its global responsibility to act as a peacekeeper.

Taiwan would have the opportunity to communicate more directly with the U.S. government, Tsai said of another call with President Trump.

The interview with the foreign media outlet comes as the Tsai administration nears its one-year mark, after winning last year’s election in a landslide.   [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2017/04/26
By: Jeremy Olivier

Tomorrow marks the 117th anniversary of Chiang Ching-kuo’s birth. Jeremy Olivier

questions whether the Generalissimo’s son was really the great initiator of democratic change so many politicians and academics like to say he was.

Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正) is persona non grata in Taiwan these days. A 2006 research report on the 228 Incident commissioned by the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration in no uncertain terms named Chiang as the primary culprit of the brutal violence experienced by Taiwanese island-wide during that event. Statues of the late dictator have been consistently defaced each year on the anniversary of 228, and his portraits, which used to hang at the back of every public school classroom in Taiwan, have gradually disappeared.

Even former president and Kuomintang (KMT) stalwart Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) acknowledged Chiang Kai-shek’s responsibility for 228 and the subsequent era of martial law known to many as the White Terror last February, an indication of a fairly broad consensus on his controversial legacy.    [FULL  STORY]

Woman fell 200 m down ravine to her death: reports

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/04/26
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A Taiwanese couple which went missing in the Himalayas

more than 50 days ago has been found, but only the man survived, with the woman fallen down a cliff to her death, reports from Nepal said Wednesday.

Liang Sheng-yueh (梁聖岳) and Liu Chen-chun (劉宸君) left for the mountainous country last February and set out from their hotel on March 8 on a program organized by a local travel agency, Asian Trekking, reports said.

They were last seen the following day, but the weather soon turned bad and heavy snow covered the area, reports said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/04/26
By: Emmanuelle Tzeng and Evelyn Kao

Paris, April 26 (CNA) Taiwan’s global press freedom ranking improved this year,

moving up six notches from 2016 to 45th, the best performance by any Asian country, according to the Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2017 released on Wednesday by the Paris-based Reporters without Borders (RSF).

Taiwan’s ranking is better than South Korea’s, which was 63rd, up seven places from last year; Japan, which remained at 72nd; and Hong Kong, which fell four places to 73rd this year.

Norway placed first in the index, which measures the level of press freedom in 180 countries, and was followed by Sweden and Finland. The other countries rounding out the top 10 are Denmark, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Jamaica, Belgium, and Iceland.    [FULL  STORY]

CULLING JUDGES:A proposal to drastically reduce the number of Supreme Court and Supreme Administrative Court judges was not run past the Presidential Office first

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 27, 2017
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

The Presidential Office yesterday said it was not consulted before the preparatory

committee for the National Congress on Judicial Reform decided to drastically reduce the number of Supreme Court judges and give the president the power to appoint judges without legislative approval.

“President Tsai [Ing-wen (蔡英文)] has always supported judicial independence. Her resolve and stated position on this matter need not be questioned,” Presidential Office spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said.

Tsai serves as the convener of the committee and there are five sub-committees.
[FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: April 27, 2017
By: Stephanie Chao and Alan Fong

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The NT$880 million infrastructure plan spearheaded by the Tsai Ing-

wen administration passed first reading at the Legislative Yuan on Monday, amid clashes between opposing party lawmakers.

The draft of the Special Act for Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Plan will now go for an up-or-down vote by lawmakers without need for further interparty negotiations.

The day started relatively peacefully as opposition Kuomintang (KMT) lawmakers took to the rostrum at the Legislative Yuan Economics Committee to speak again the bill, which they call a wasteful spending spree favoring local governments governed by ruling party chiefs.

Tension began to raise after Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the convener of the Legislative Yuan Economics Committee ended the discussion and began reciting the articles of the bill in a move to pass it for the first reading.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: 2017/04/25
By: TNL 編輯

Good Eye Taipei’s recommendations for Taipei’s best places to soak in the charm of libraries.

A library might not be a typical place of interest for tourists, but some libraries in Taipei have unique collections of books and magazines that might be worth visiting.

“Good Eye Taipei,” a new bilingual Taipei city guide, shares six libraries in the city to check out.

Boven Magazine Library

A library themed around design and lifestyle magazines.

Not Just Library

A library focusing on design in Songshan Creative and Cultural Park. It occasionally holds exhibitions and events.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/04/25
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)–Taipei City’s Department of Urban Development confirmed on

Tuesday that the building of Italian restaurant IL MERCATO, which was recently accused of discriminating against a Taiwanese customer, is an illegal building and will be torn down in June.

The restaurant, located in Taipei’s Shilin District, has received much media attention after it was accused by a Taiwanese customer of discriminating against her and her friends. In the wake of the consumer dispute, local media reported that the restaurant is an illegally-built building.

The department confirmed that the building of the restaurant had been reported and filed as an illegal building in 1999 and was scheduled to be demolished in June this year.    [FULL  STORY]