Lecturer created fake companies and job titles to attract students

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/26 14:00
By: Matthew Lubin, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taipei City police have detained motivational teacher Wu

Tung-jung (吳東融) for allegedly sexually assaulting five female students who had enrolled in his spiritual motivation classes.

The 34-year-old man allegedly advertised on Facebook calling himself a “spiritual lecturer” and claimed to have attracted more than 300 students, according to an Apple Daily report. On his Facebook page, he claimed to be CEO of a design company, which does not have any online presence other than an address in Wanhua District, and GET成功易開罐, his motivational education company, to improve his credibility. With the help of friends and even some students, his online persona spread slowly.

His course claimed to build confidence and realize dreams and included lessons on “how to communicate freely” and “seven keys to achieving dreams.”
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/26
By: Wen Kui-hsiang and S.C. Chang

Taipei, March 26 (CNA) Politicians across party lines in Taiwan said Sunday they hope

the people of Hong Kong will have a right to choose their top government leader, as people here do.

Commenting on the selection of Carrie Lam as the Chinese special administrative area’s chief executive by an election committee, Lin Wei-chou (林為洲), a legislative caucus whip of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), said Lam has been chosen by an indirect vote, rather than by a popular vote.

“We expect Hong Kong will have a universal suffrage in the future, which will lessen controversies,” said Lin, noting that Lam’s election has the problem of “a lack of public representation.”   [FULL  STORY]

LACK OF ATTENTION:The former AIT director said on the sidelines of a Taipei forum that he did not know if Donald Trump was ‘ready’ to meet his Chinese counterpart

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 27, 2017
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

US President Donald Trump’s unpredictability makes him “kind of afraid” of what might

happen if Trump’s reported meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) next month in the US occurs, former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) director William Stanton said yesterday.

Stanton, who led the AIT’s Taipei office from 2009 to 2012 during then-US president Barack Obama’s presidency, spoke to reporters in Mandarin on the sidelines of a forum in Taipei about Taiwan’s strategic planning during Trump’s term in office.

The forum was hosted by the Taiwan Forever Association and the International Committee for a Democratic Taiwan, and Stanton was one of the panelists.

While it is hard to predict what Trump and Xi would talk about when they meet, many political analysts have noticed the new US president’s inclination to pay little attention to policy issues during his meetings with foreign heads of state, Stanton said.
[FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: March 27, 2017
By Joseph Yeh

It has been years since observers speculated that Taiwan could gain diplomatic allies

— a drought broken after foreign media reported earlier this month that the island is moving closer to the Sovereign Order of Malta.

Ralph Jennings, a contributor for Forbes, wrote on March 13 that Taiwan and the Sovereign Order of Malta, a tiny European government inside Rome, could form official ties even though both governments had given no formal indication of their intention to do so, having only stressing further cooperation between the two sides.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry did not directly confirm or deny the report. But a senior diplomatic source later told The China Post that this is a “nonissue” since the order’s international status is debatable given the U.N. sees it as “sovereign entity” and not a “sovereign state.”    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-03-25

Premier Lin Chuan says that the government will work to expand public childcare and

diversify Taiwan’s educational system.

The premier was speaking Saturday at a children’s event held by the Social and Family Affairs Administration.

Lin said that pressures on today’s Taiwanese families have left them less willing to have children than the previous generation. He said that the government must respond to Taiwan’s low birthrate by providing better childcare services. He said the education ministry has drawn up a four-year plan that will expand the proportion of public childcare providers.

Lin said the government must also address Taiwan’s competitive system of educational advancement based on entrance exams. He said the government hopes to build a diverse system that gives families more choice, eases pressure, and looks beyond exam-taking to give students useful knowledge and values.    [FULL  STORY]

Number of additional prizes of NT$200 reduced

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/25
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Up to NT$10 million (US$329,500) is up for grabs as the

winning numbers from the uniform invoices for the months of January and February 2017 were announced Saturday.

However, the amount of extra winning combinations of three digits which could win NT$200 (US$6.5) was reduced from four to one this time.

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) lists the full numbers and the corresponding numbers on its website. Winners must fill out the form on the back of the receipt and present it with their ID card at any post office from April 6 to July 7.

The NT$10 million special prize goes to the persons who hold the uniform invoice with the number 82885130, the MOF announced.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/25
By: Elaine Hou

Taipei, March 25 (CNA) A total of 148 foreign students took part in the annual Dajia

Mazu pilgrimage in Taichung on Saturday, alongside hundreds of thousands of local pilgrims, taking the opportunity to learn more about local culture.

The students from 27 countries traveled to Taichung in central Taiwan to participate in an activity dubbed “Fun Mazu-Learn Chinese,” which was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and Feng Chia University (FCU).

Before joining the parade, the foreign students gathered at Yonghe Palace in Taichung’s Dadu district, where professors from FCU’s Chinese Language Center gave briefings on the architecture of Taiwan’s temples, the legend of the sea goddess Mazu, and the Mazu religious ceremony, according to the education ministry.  [FULL  STORY]

‘INAPPROPRIATE’:Department of Information Services Director Kao Tsun said the content of a poster promoting pension reform was wrong and it would be abandoned

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 26, 2017
By: Abraham Gerber, Cheng Hung-ta and Jake Chung / Staff reporters, with staff writer

Members of teachers’ unions yesterday joined retired military personnel in a march to

the Executive Yuan in Taipei to protest pension reform promotional materials, condemning the use of the term “unjust” on a poster.

The poster depicts a child’s hand touching an adult’s hand, calling for pension reform “for the sake of children.”

Dozens of National Federation of Teachers’ Unions members and the retired military personnel — who have been camped outside the Legislative Yuan to protest pension reform — twice clashed with police while waiting for a government representative to hear their demands over the poster, which was approved by the Cabinet earlier this month and calls the pension system “unjust.”

“What we see is the Democratic Progressive Party continually seeking to vilify military personnel, civil servants and teachers on the issue of pensions, a campaign for which it has even enlisted government agencies and the education system,” federation director-general Huang Yao-nan (黃耀南) said, adding that numerous ministries and schools had been instructed to distribute the poster electronically.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: March 26, 2017
By: news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Japan’s Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Jiro

Akama arrived in Taiwan Saturday, the highest-ranking government official to visit the island since the severing of diplomatic ties between Taipei and Tokyo in 1972.

Speaking at the Colorful Japan event in Taipei, Akama called on President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration to lift a ban on imports of food from prefectures affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Akama said the products had already been cleared as safe for consumption in Japan.

The government has faced intense pressure from civic groups and the opposition Kuomintang over the possible easing of the ban. Public hearings on the issue drew large protests around the island.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-03-24

Wife of missing NGO worker seeks explanation from China

At a press conference, she held the picture of her husband Lee Ming-che.

The wife of a missing Taiwanese NGO worker has demanded an explanation from China of her husband’s whereabouts. Lee Ming-che went missing after entering Guangdong province via Macau on March 19.

Lee works for a community college and was formerly a staff member of the Democratic Progressive Party. On Friday, Lee’s wife Lee Ching-yu said her husband had planned to speak about Taiwan’s path to democracy, as he had in previous years. She said she is concerned that Chinese authorities may have detained him because of his involvement in human rights issues.    [FULL  STORY]