Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/02/14

Taipei, Feb. 14 (CNA) A man injured in Monday night’s crash of a tour bus in northern Taiwan has died, bringing the accident’s death toll to 33, Taipei Municipal Wanfang Hospital said Tuesday.

The man, who was not identified, was one of two people taken to Wanfang hospital for treatment. The other, a woman, was said to be in critical but stable condition.

Ten other people who survived the crash are still being treated at different hospitals.

The accident occurred at about 9 p.m. Monday, when the bus was traveling in the slow lane of the exit ramp connecting National Freeway No. 5 and National Freeway No. 3 in Taipei’s Nangang District.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/02/14
By: Sunrise Huang, Chu Tse-wei and Kuo Chung-han

Taipei, Feb. 13 (CNA) A tour bus overturned on an exit ramp connecting two national freeways in Nangang District in Taipei on Monday night, killing at least 32 people and injuring 12, rescuers and firefighters said.

The tour bus with 44 people on board, including the driver and tour guide, flipped off the side of an exit ramp connecting Freeway No. 5 (from Yilan County to Nangang) to southbound lanes of Freeway No. 3 at around 9 p.m., firefighters said.

Rescuers moved quickly to remove people from the bus, but they found many without any vital signs.

As of 11:45 p.m., 32 people had died in the crash, including two who had been hospitalized, and the other 12 were being treated at nearby hospitals for severe injuries. No foreign nationals were thought to be aboard.    [FULL  STORY]

The crash occurred as tour bus was returning from a trip to Wulin Farm in Central Taiwan to view cherry blossoms

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/02/13
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A tour bus flipped over as it was heading southbound on Freeway No. 5 at

approximately 9 pm, killing 32 passengers and injuring 12, none of whom are believed to be Chinese tourists at the time of writing .

According to a preliminary investigation by highway police, the tour bus was on its way back to Taipei from a visit to the Wuling Farm (武陵農場) to view cherry blossoms when the bus suddenly flipped off the side of an exit ramp connecting Freeway No. 5 (from Yilan County to Nangang) to southbound lanes of Freeway No. 3.

Highway police said according to a preliminary investigation, the tour bus was leased by a travel agency headquartered in Taipei’s Datong District, Chongqing North Road Section 1, and is believed to have had 44 people (primarily senior citizens) on board, including the driver and tour guide.

Authorities said that 32 have perished as a result of the crash, and as rescue efforts are still underway, the northbound Shihting ramp of Freeway No. 5 is closed to all traffic. Drivers are advised to find alternate routes.    [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2017/02/13
By: By Ben Goren, TaiwaneseCulture.org

For traffic safety to radically improve in Taiwan, rather than design the streets to be convenient mostly

for cars, the built environment of cities and towns should be re-oriented so that it is convenient for pedestrians, mass public transit, and small size vehicles.

Living in Taiwan, as with any country, comes with its own particular advantages and challenges. One mundane but high-frequency challenge is getting around. Outside of trains and mass transport, there’s the choice of facing the hazards of using the roads as a pedestrian, cyclist, or a motorist. The risks of doing so is a topic that frequently pops up — a common denominator amongst foreign residents and Taiwanese alike. Complaining about the traffic is almost a cultural tradition here — a past time the author himself has contributed to in various fora including serious and satirical blog posts, Twitter, and in letters to newspapers. Much of the debate about why Taiwanese traffic is so hazardous has focused on the particular quirks of how the Taiwanese use the roads, often with a slight Orientalist tone. Taiwanese, many of us conclude, are bad drivers and have little inclination to follow the rules and laws of the highway most of the time. A running internet joke of foreigners states, “You know you have been in Taiwan too long when you look both ways before going through a green light.” A variation of the same joke only swaps “green” for “red” when in Rome.

You would be hard-pressed to find a foreign resident who does not have a personal traffic accident anecdote. I used to tell new arrivals that if they wanted to ride a scooter it would be a matter of when, not if, they would have an accident. Driving in Taiwan can be extremely hazardous, not always passively. In sixteen years of living here, the author’s personal tally stands as follows:

• Hit by a car: 2
• Hit another scooter at speed: 1
• Hit by a scooter at speed: 2
• Hit by a scooter at low speeds: 10+
• Slid and fell off scooter: 2

[FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 14, 2017
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

All court proceedings should be broadcast live and recorded, New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Hsu

Yung-ming (徐永明) said yesterday, promising to propose amendments to the Organic Act of Court Organization (法院組織法).

“Recent cases in which live broadcasting was allowed deserve commendation, but courts should not be allowed to cherry-pick which case to broadcast,” Hsu told a news conference, adding that judges and prosecutors should be required to allow recording in courtrooms.

The Supreme Court recently allowed a limited live broadcast of Aboriginal hunter Wang Kuang-lu’s (王光祿) trial, while the Council of Grand Justices has announced that it is to broadcast next month’s debate over the constitutionality of marriage equality.

However, the broadcasts have been spotty and limited to controversial or well-publicized cases, with provisions of the act stating that courtroom recording may only proceed with approval from the presiding judge, who also has the authority to demand their erasur    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: February 14, 2017
By: Sun Hsin Hsuan

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The government was urged Monday to issue its highest warning level as the bird flu

outbreak continued its steady spread north.

Attending the first meeting of a new Central Emergency Operation Center task force, Premier Lin Chuan urged authorities to step up inspections of illegal slaughterhouses, but urged the public not to panic.

While the H5N6 virus had been transmitted from poultry to humans in China, where it killed 10 people, no such cases had been found in Japan or South Korea, Lin said.

Southern Taiwan Infected

The opposition Kuomintang joined experts Monday in urging the government to deem the situation a national-level crisis, with critics blaming the fast-spreading epidemic on the Council of Agriculture’s (COA) failure to react quickly.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/02/13
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

With the help of a Japanese-speaking police officer, a 75-year-old Japanese man who got lost in Jiufen, New Taipei City, a popular destination among Japanese tourists, was able to unite with his family.

The Japanese man wandered away from his family and a tour guide the other days when they toured Jiufen, police said. As he still remembered they stayed in a hotel not far from Taipei Main Station, he hired a taxi to take him to a police station near the station to ask for help, police said.

However, as the Japanese man can’t speak Chinese or English, police officers at the Jian Cheng substation where the taxi driver dropped him off were at a loss as to what to do next, according to police at the substation. At this juncture, police officer Huang Chien-chia, who speaks fluent Japanese, came up to the old man and began to communicate with him in Japanese, police said. The lost man told Huang about his family and how he got lost.

Finally, police were able to deduce from the situation surrounding the incident that his family would very possibly report his missing at a local police substation in the Jiufen area. Therefore, police at the Jian Cheng substation called police substations in that area one by one, and found that the tour guide left the Japanese family’s contact information and the address of the hotel where they stayed for vacation at the Jiufen police substation, police said. With that lead, police was able to drive the Japanese man to the hotel to unite with his family.    [FULL  STORY]

An interesting scene in Taipei Main Station has gone viral on Internet

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/02/12
By: Rana Yeh, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Taipei (Taiwan News) — Reddit user Shuo Huang when traveling to Taipei from Vancouver, Canada took

this photo of the inside of Taipei Main Station seemingly showing no one sitting on any of the white tiles.

In fact, this interesting scene has made for heated discussions in Taiwan last year. Some netizens said the color black is less conspicuous, which makes people feel safe. Some think that the color white is easier to get dirty than black, so they feel less guilty about sitting on the black tiles.

Others speculated that no one dared sit on the white tiles because the color white symbolizes death in Chinese culture.

One netizen even said that the Taipei Main Station has turned into a funny “human chess board.”
[SOURCE]

Shephard Media
Date: 12th February 2017
By: Charles Au in Taipei

Taiwan kicked off its air force’s advanced jet trainer (AJT) programme on 7 February. A memorandum of cooperation was signed between the Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) and the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) to develop the XT-5 trainer.

The XT-5 will be designed by the NCSIST’s Aeronautical Systems Research Division, and it will be manufactured by the Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC).

The new AJT will replace 49 AIDC AT-3 Tzu Chung advanced trainers and 25 Northrop/AIDC F-5E/F fighters that have been acting as lead-in fighter trainers for decades in the Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF).

This project for 66 new planes will cost Taiwan NTD68.6 billion (US$2.2 billion). Two prototypes are expected to take off sometime in 2020, mass production will start in 2023 and the programme will be completed by 2026.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan’s geopolitical circumstances confer very particular meaning to its social and political life, but other, less internationally prominent issues hold real substance for the Taiwanese people.

The News Lens
Date: 2017/02/12
By: Mark Harrison

The landslide election of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) from the Democratic

Progressive Party (DPP) in January 2016 was not a surprise in terms of the vicissitudes of a democracy, but it took on significance in the context of cross-Strait and U.S.-China relations. The Taiwanese elected a government that has declined to acquiesce to the so-called 1992 Consensus and one that has questioned the role of business and party political interests in the period of “cross-Strait rapprochement” under the previous government. In response, Beijing has sought to squeeze Taiwan’s international space and limited its own contact with Taipei.

The phone call between Tsai and the newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump in November gave the Taiwanese rare international legitimacy. It also greatly irritated Beijing and threatened to reduce the Taiwanese to a gambit by the Trump administration in the new era of U.S.-China relations. For China, Taiwan’s status is simply non-negotiable.    [FULL  STORY]