Tainan University wins 2017 Song-jiang Battle Array competition in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/12
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) The Tainan University team seized first place and the top cash

prize of NT$1 million (US$32,000) at the finals of the annual Song-Jiang Jhen Battle Array (宋江陣) competition held in Neimen, Kaohsiung on Saturday.

Tainan University Song-Jiang Battle Array team in Neimen District of Kaohsiung (CNA photo)

In the final intense round, after a week of grueling competition held at the Nanhaizizhu Temple (南海紫竹寺), the Tainan University team held off tough field of competitors to walk away as the champions of the Song-Jiang Battle Array tournament for the third consecutive time. Lunghwa University of Science and Technology took second place, while I-Shou University took third place.

Da-Yeh University fused East and West with its athletes combining cheerleader attire and acrobatics with traditional kung fu weapons and forms. The Lunghwa University team told the story of the “Duck King,” (鴨母王), Chu Yi-kuei, a legendary figure from Neimen who lead an uprising against the Manchus. Shih Chien University reenacted the story of Hua Mulan (花木蘭).2    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/12
By: Han Ting-ting and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, March 12 (CNA) Taiwanese business tycoon Terry Gou (郭台銘) revealed on

Sunday that he hopes one day the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will jointly establish a special zone for medical care and treatment on Kinmen, a Taiwan-controlled island group off southern China.

Once a battlefield, he outlined his hopes for a peaceful future on Kinmen, at a press conference held by the Yonglin Healthcare Foundation at Yonglin Biomedical Engineering Hall in Taipei.

Kinmen “should have a new start as the frontline in the battle against aging, illness and death,” Gou said, while announcing the foundation’s establishment of a global alliance to combat breast cancer.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 13, 2017
By: Chen Yu-fu and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

Pianist and composer Chang Mu-ting (張穆庭) yesterday announced the founding of the

People Rich Party (民生黨) with a pro-unification platform and himself as chairman.

The party is named after “people’s livelihood” (民生, minsheng) — one of Sun Yat-sen’s (孫逸仙) “three principles of the people” enshrined in the Republic of China’s (ROC) Constitution — to emphasize its concern with economic issues, Chang said.

The party aims to “effectively revive the Taiwanese economy, address the public’s economic concerns, insist on the 1992 consensus’ and implement the goal of national unification under the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the ROC,” Chang said, citing the party’s charter.

The party’s main agenda includes calling for a presidential pardon for Justin Lin (林毅夫) — who defected to China in 1979 when he was an army captain serving on Kinmen and later became a World Bank vice president, an immediate suspension of civil service pension reforms, ending cross-strait tensions and unification with China, Chang said.
[FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: March 13, 20170
By: The China Post news staff with CNA

Once the front line in the Chinese Civil War, Kinmen could soon become a battlefield of

another sort, after tycoon Terry Gou (郭台銘) announced plans for an advanced medical care zone on the island.

Gou said Sunday he hoped both sides of the strait would jointly establish a special zone for medical care and treatment on Kinmen, a Taiwan-controlled island group off southern China.

Kinmen “should have a new start as the front line in the battle against aging, illness and death,” Gou said, while announcing the establishment of a global alliance to combat breast cancer.    [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2017/03/11
By: Tim Ferry

Taiwan is facing a social time bomb as its population ages. Critics question how the Tsai

administration intends to pay for long-term care and ask what the implications are for the future.

Seventy-year-old retiree Mrs. Lin is part of the fastest growing demographic in Taiwan – the elderly, who now account for some 13 percent of the population but will likely reach 20 percent by 2025, bringing Taiwan into the ranks of the super-aged societies.

Yet the retired septuagenarian is healthy and active, keeping a schedule of activities ranging from dance classes to volunteering to care for grandchildren that would exhaust people one-third her age. With a wide network of friends and family and benefiting from many government-sponsored community programs aimed at keeping the elderly engaged and healthy, Lin represents the best side of growing older in Taiwan.
[FULL  STORY]

Products were made with margarine, oils and fats beyond expiration date

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/11
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A total of 892 tons of food products made with fat and

margarine products beyond their expiry dates were still available in stores, reports said Saturday.

A raid on a Far East Oil Mills Co. factory in Taoyuan City Wednesday turned up 906 tons of baking oil products, including margarine and shortening, which had been made with ingredients which had already passed their expiration dates, health inspectors said. The investigators also found 43 tons of oil past its expiration date at the same factory.

As a result, local governments ordered the relevant products to be removed from store shelves and told bakers and other food producers to stop using them.   [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/11
By: Wu Tze-hao and Lilian Wu

Taipei, March 11 (CNA) The pilot of an ultralight aircraft suffered only minor injuries after his plane crashed into a paddy field in Changhua County Saturday afternoon.

The pilot, surnamed Chen, 53, was flying from Yunlin to Changhua, but apparently departed from the designated flight path as a result of strong winds.

A witness surnamed Lee said he was working in a paddy field when he saw the aircraft begin to move from side to side at a height of about three or four-stories from the ground and then lose control, crashing into a nearby paddy field in Pitou Township.
[FULL  STORY]

BLACK PYTHON:A resident who posted photographs and video of the pollution on social media said that a ‘suspicious’ passing vessel might have dumped the oil

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 12, 2017
By: Staff writer, with CNA

Authorities yesterday worked to clean up oil that might have been illegally dumped in

waters near Green Island (綠島), Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) officials said.

Officials said they received reports about the oil spill near Green Island on Friday night and yesterday sent experts to the site.

The oil spread about 10km along Green Island’s north coast, Green Island Inspection Office chief Hsiao Su-ping (蕭肅平) said.

The most heavily polluted waters stretched 600m from the island’s lighthouse in the northwest to Jhongliao Harbor (中寮港), Hsiao said, adding that the sea bed around the island was also affected by the oil.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: March 12, 2017
By: The China Post news staff

An estimated 5,000 people took to the streets in Taipei Saturday to press the

government for concrete plans to honor its promise of a nuclear-free homeland by 2025.

Cabinet spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung responded to the protesters’ demands by saying the government’s goal of phasing out nuclear power by 2025 remained unchanged, and it would make public its plans for achieving it later this month.

The phasing out of nuclear power by 2025 is written in the recently revised Electricity Act, but environmentalists remain unconvinced of the government’s determination to materialize the goal.

The latest protests saw anti-nuclear power demonstrators march down the streets in Taipei, as well as Kaohsiung and Taitung, accusing President Tsai Ing-wen of making an empty promise for a nuclear-free homeland, which was a major part of her election platform.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-03-10

Premier Lin Chuan says the Cabinet has already returned a draft bill governing national

security protection to the justice ministry. Lin was speaking Friday in an interview.

There has been great controversy over the draft bill proposed by the ministry’s investigation bureau. Under the draft bill, law enforcement officers will be stationed in government buildings. Government agencies may also give them the power to obtain documents or other information related to people that they find suspicious.

Critics have said this degree of power is excessive and violates human rights. One prominent member of the ruling DPP called the bill a “grave violation of the spirit of the rule of law.”    [FULL  STORY]