The News Lens
Date: 2017/04/07
By: TNL Staff

RSF told The New York Times the organization originally wanted to open its Asia office

in Hong Kong but the organization was concerned about ‘a lack of legal certainty’ and surveillance of its members.

Reporters Without Borders, also known as Reporters sans frontières (RSF), plans to open its first Asia bureau in Taiwan.

The global press freedom watchdog will use the Taipei bureau to focus on issues across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, North Korea, South Korea and Mongolia.

“The choice of Taiwan was made not only with regards to its central geographic location and ease of operating logistics, but also considering its status of being the freest place in Asia in our annual Press Freedom Index ranking,” says RSF Secretary General Christophe Deloire.    [FULL  STORY]

After a three-month closure since January, the “Angel’s Tears” reopens for the first time this year in April

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/04/07
By: Rana Yeh, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) –After a three-month environment and wildlife recovery period,

the Jiaming Lake National Trail was reopened on April 1. The whole path along with the cabins are now accessible for visitors to apply for online.

Jiaming Lake (嘉明湖), located in Haiduan Township (海端鄉), Taitung County, is the second highest lake in Taiwan. It is a renowned alpine lake, which is traditionally referred as “Angel’s Teardrop” due to the deep sapphire color of the lake. Jiaming Lake National Trail is an important habitat for wild animals including Formosan sambar deer and Formosan black bear. The trail runs through both ecological protection areas and restricted mountain areas.

On the way to visit Jiaming Lake, hikers can scale the area’s two well-known peaks: Xiangyang Mountain (向陽山) and Sancha Mountain (三叉山), at the height of 3,603 and 3,496 meters. Both mountains are listed on the 100 Peaks of Taiwan, chosen by a group of prominent Taiwanese hikers from among the peaks known at the time to be over 3,000 meters in height.    [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2017/04/06

HBO’s first Chinese-language original series has been endorsed by the Taiwan

president.

For the first time since HBO was founded in 1972, the network has launched a Chinese-language original series. “The Teenage Psychic” follows a 16-year-old psychic as she struggles with the pressures of her teenage life and the demands of the spirit world.

“The Teenage Psychic,” which was shot and set in Taiwan, drew an enthusiastic response after it premiered on April 2. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) shared the series via her Facebook page, asking people to support it and saying it marks a significant step in promoting Taiwan’s film and TV production industry to the world.
[FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/04/06
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)–Persecutors decided Thursday not to press charges against

four people who spread a fake photo of a collapsed building and fake news that buildings collapsed in a large city in southwestern Taiwan following a strong earthquake that struck the area in February this year.

An earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale rocked southwestern Taiwan and its offshore area around 1 a.m. on February 11 this year and many residents in the region were awakened during sleep by the tremor. Tainan City, a metropolitan city located in southwestern Taiwan, had previously suffered serious causalities from a stronger temblor on February 6 last year, and people in this city still have memories of the catastrophic quake that took 117 lives, of whom 115 were residents of one building that collapsed in the quake.

Not long after the February 11 quake, a photo of a collapsed building circulated on social media websites and apps with the captions “building collapsed again in Tainan” and “building collapsed on Jinhua Road in Tainan,” prompting many people to call the city government, police and fire departments to seek confirmation of the news. They were told it was fake news.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/04/06
By: Miao Tsung-han and S.C. Chang

Taipei, April 6 (CNA) Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) has sent five messages to China requesting China’s approval for family members of detained human rights and pro-democracy activist Lee Ming-che (李明哲) to visit him in China, but has received no response from its Chinese counterpart, a senior mainland affairs official said on Thursday.

Lee, a former Democratic Progressive Party worker and a staff member at Wenshan Community College in Taipei, was detained by China after entering China via Macao on March 19. His wife and several NGO leaders have urged China to release him or at least to disclose where he is being held.

Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Deputy Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with the failure of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), which deals with SEF, to respond either to SEF or Lee’s family.
[FULL  STORY]

DIET PLAN:In a bid to eliminate ‘fat cats,’ most government-appointed positions are to be unpaid, while any pension benefits would be forfeited by those in salaried roles

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 07, 2017
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

Following more than a decade of legislative proposals, the Cabinet yesterday approved

a draft law on nonprofit foundations to place government-funded foundations under strict supervision and prevent them from misappropriating national assets.

The draft act divides foundations into two categories — private and government-funded — each with their own regulatory criteria, Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) said.

Stricter regulations are to be imposed on government-sponsored foundations, such as the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, and those funded with public properties taken over from the Japanese colonial government, including the Taiwan Telecommunication Industry Development Association, the Postal Association and the Taiwan Sugar Association, which control billions of New Taiwan dollars in assets, but operate outside government control.

Foundations are to be required to disclose their financial and operational data, as well as establish accounting and auditing systems, and would be subject to financial penalties if they fail to comply with government inspections or supervision.
[FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: April 7, 2017
By: CNA

This artist’s rendering provided by Taiwan Power Co. shows the winning design in a creative high-voltage tower competition. The design’s high-voltage towers resemble the Chinese character sheng (生), which means “life.” The company said the towers in the design would be built as soon as next year on the Yilan-Hualien border. The second round of the competition has already kicked off, with first place coming with a cash prize of NT$150,000    [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2017/04/05
By: Rosemary Chen

Referring to themselves as ‘soil doctors,’ an interesting startup, TSBiotech, has big

dreams for transforming the future of organic farming in Taiwan and beyond.

In 2014, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) called for urgent action to improve the health of the world’s limited soil resources to ensure that future generations have enough supplies of food, water and energy. That year, experts warned that some 33 percent of the world’s soil resource was already moderately- to highly-degraded. The key causes given were erosion, nutrient depletion, acidification, urbanization and chemical pollution. What is more, the growing global population will put an even greater strain on land resources. Estimates are the global population will exceed 9 billion people by 2050, which will result in a 60 percent increase in the demand for food, feed and fiber.

TSBiotech founder and chief executive Sean Liu (劉祐誠) explains the soil degradation problems that TSBiotech is working to change and the challenges the team has faced since founding the company in 2015.

The News Lens: So what exactly is a soil doctor?

Sean Liu: Like doctors, we first assess the patient – which is the soil quality in this context – to find out why it might be sick – reasons for soil degradation. Then, we write up a diagnosis for our patient, along with a prescription. The prescription would include recommendations for fertilizers, effective microbes, and organic farming methods such as nets or pheromone bug trappers. If the farmer decides to use our prescription, we help them create the fertilizer mix and visit their farms to teach them how to use it.
[FULL  STORY]

Farms in Yunlin County are now filled with yellow flowers, attracting many visitors to stop by and take pictures

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/04/05
By: Maggie Huang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) –Farms in Yunlin County are now filled with yellow flowers, attracting many visitors to stop by and take pictures. However, the story lies behind the sea of flowers is the low price and difficult sales of agricultural products.

As the price for lettuce keeps on plummeting recently, farmers in Yunlin have no choice but to leave them in the farm, and with the lettuce started blooming, the farms are turning into the current yellow flower sea.

Some farmers indicated that they used to pluck lettuce from the field before it starts blooming, but due to the current low price, they couldn’t afford the labor cost and transportation fees of picking up those vegetables and had to leave them in the farm.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/04/05
By: Jeffrey Wu and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, April 5 (CNA) A hacker group calling itself AnonymousFox has since March 25

undertaken defacement attacks against about 100 government and private websites in Taiwan, according to data from Zone-H.org, the largest website defacement archive.

About 100 websites using the domain “com.tw” have had their front pages defaced since that date as a result of attacks by AnonymousFox, according to the data.

In most cases, the defacement of these websites has caused more reputational damage than financial losses or leaked information, Zone-H said.

Zone-H provides unlimited information such as the address of hacked websites, the time the hacking occurred and a screenshot of the webpage after it was hacked.
[FULL  STORY]