Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/12/30
By: Chiu Chun-chin and Y.F. Low

Taipei, Dec. 30 (CNA) More than 4,000 grams of heroin was seized earlier this week at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport after the drugs were found in the luggage of a traveler who was returning from Cambodia, the Customs Administration said Friday.

The passenger, who arrived Wednesday on a China Airlines flight from Phnom Penh, was carrying in his checked luggage 24 jars of a white paste, which was labeled as bird’s nest drinks, Customs said.

The substance, totaling 4,398 grams, was later determined to be heroin, with a street market value of NT$70 million, according to Customs.

The passenger has been referred to the Investigation Bureau for alleged violation of the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act, Customs said.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: December 31, 2016
By: Joseph Yeh

TAIPEI, Taiwan — President Tsai Ing-wen will make transit stops in Houston and San Francisco during

President Tsai Ing-wen will make transit stops in Houston and San Francisco during her upcoming state visit to four of the nation’s diplomatic allies in Central America, the Presidential Office announced Friday.

her upcoming state visit to four of the nation’s diplomatic allies in Central America, the Presidential Office announced Friday.

The announcement, made weeks after Taiwanese media reported that she planned to visit Central America, was seen as the president’s effort to make her trip less contentious to Washington and Beijing.

Presidential Office Spokesman Alex Huang said Tsai would make a stopover in Houston en route to Central America and San Francisco on her return trip to Taiwan.

Huang would not say whether the president would meet with representatives of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump during her stopover in the U.S. amid media speculation that such a meeting could take place.    [FULL  STORY]

A look at the 10 most-viewed stories on the Taiwan News website in the year 2016

Taiwan News
Date; 2016/12/30
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Like much of the world, 2016 has been a dramatic year for Taiwan, with many momentous, tragic, and bizarre events taking place. During this year, the readers of Taiwan News have taken great interest in a wide variety of topics, from homicide to hygiene, labor laws to holiday fun, president-elects to Nazis, and typhoons to Tso’s chicken. The following are the top ten most-viewed stories on the Taiwan News website for 2016:

10. Don’t chuck it, flush it: EPA

The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said on Dec. 8 that it will launch a campaign to encourage people to flush used toilet paper, instead of depositing it in trash cans as is the custom in Taiwan, as part of an effort to improve bathroom hygiene. EPA head Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said his agency will come up with a campaign to encourage the flushing of toilet paper in three months.

Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) of the opposition Kuomintang noted that Taiwan and China are among the few areas in the world where toilet paper cannot be flushed, which she described as an indicator of being less developed.

9. A four-year-old girl beheaded by a man in Taipei

On the morning of March 28, a four-year-old girl was attacked randomly and beheaded by a 33-year-old man surnamed Wang, who was arrested by the police at the crime scene and was said to have medical records at a public psychiatric hospital. The attack occurred at 11 AM in an empty lot located on Huanshan Road in Neihu District, Taipei City. Authorities said that the little girl was attacked by the man while she was riding a strider bike with her mother on the street. The man kept chopping the girl’s neck from the back with a cleaver, and the brutal act caused the girl to die instantly as her head was severed from her body.

He had once sought treatment at a public psychiatric hospital, in 2014, but added that it does not prove he has a mental illness. At the time, the man admitted to taking drugs, but a drug test came up negative.
[ITEMS 8 – 1]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/12/29
By: Chen Chih-chung and Kuo Chung-han

Taipei, Dec. 29 (CNA) Chang Yi-hsi (張藝曦), an associate professor at National Chiao Tung University,

Photo courtesy of Tang Prize Foundation

Liao Hsiao-ching (廖小菁), a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology and four other young scholars won the Second Yu Ying-shih Humanistic Research Award in Taipei on Thursday.

Chang and Liao received a research grant worth NT$360,000 (US$11,138) to write a monograph and a congratulatory award.

Tu Feng-en (涂豐恩), a Ph.D. student at Harvard University, Liu Wei-chih (劉威志), a Ph.D. student at National Tsing Hua University, together with Kao Chen-huan (高震寰) and Han Cheng-hua (韓承樺), Ph.D. students at National Taiwan University, received a research grant worth NT$240,000 to write a doctoral dissertation and a congratulatory award.

The award ceremony was hosted by Academia Sinica Vice President Huang Chin-shing (黃進興) in Taipei on Thursday.    [FULL  STORY]

FAILURE:Human rights education needs to focus on the past and take in all areas of study so young people understand the importance of universal rights, the president said

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 30, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

Adults, not students, are at fault for a Nazi cosplay incident on Friday last week, President Tsai Ing-wen

President Tsai Ing-wen, center, speaks at a meeting of the Human Rights Advisory Committee at the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday. Photo: CNA

(蔡英文) said yesterday, adding that it was the result of the nation’s “superficial” human rights education and failure to teach young people about state repression of rights in the past.

Tsai made the remarks at the 25th meeting of the Presidential Office’s Human Rights Advisory Committee yesterday afternoon, urging Taiwanese to make an effort to let the nation’s human rights freedoms set the bar for other nations.

Since the cosplay event, students and school authorities at Hsinchu Kuang Fu High School have received an outpouring of criticism, with the former accused of ignorance and the latter of negligence.

The event also drew ire from the representative offices of Israel and Germany. The school’s principal, Cheng Hsiao-ming (程曉銘), resigned on Sunday.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: December 30, 2016
By: The China Post news staff

Many lawmakers have vowed to veto what they describe as an “unfair” agreement that Taiwan signed

Many lawmakers have vowed to veto what they describe as an “unfair” agreement that Taiwan signed last week to facilitate a U.S. tax evasion crackdown reportedly set to target up to 5,000 Taiwanese who are also American citizens.

last week to facilitate a U.S. tax evasion crackdown reportedly set to target up to 5,000 Taiwanese who are also American citizens.

The lawmakers said the freshly-signed agreement on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) allows the U.S. government to collect data on “non-cooperative” clients from Taiwan’s banks, but does not require the United States to reciprocate the favor.

Questioning Finance Minister Sheu Yu-jer over the fairness of the FATCA agreement at the Legislature’s Finance Committee meeting Thursday, the lawmakers vowed to block the pact, which requires the Legislature’s approval.

Sheu told the lawmakers that Taiwan would seek to sign a tax information exchange agreement (TIEA) with the United States.    [FULL  STORY]

Ten questions with the founder of Taiwan education technology company Hahow.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/12/28
By: Yuan-ling Liang

The education system in Taiwan, as in much of Asia, is notorious for its rigidity. Students often struggle to find the time to explore different possibilities and subsequently find themselves in jobs they don’t have a passion for. Hahow founder Arnold Chiang (江前緯) explains what his company is doing to change that by crowdfunding hundreds of new courses for thousands of learners.

The News Lens International (TNLI): What is the origin of Hahow and when did you come up with the idea for the business?

Arnold Chiang: Throughout the journey of learning, there is a notable barrier for people like us, who long for an interdisciplinary experience. As students in Taiwan, once we choose a specific major in college, we tend to only be on the same path for at least 30 years. This brings out a problem that we don’t have a positive mentality to explore or be able to chase what we love. We all have those little ideas in our minds that could brighten up our lives. Hence, it is very important to create a friendly environment for people who want to learn different skills just for fun and to think out of box. We believed it could be accomplished by the power of technology and creativity. We’ve been through trials and errors. With the philosophy of a lean startup, we built a relatively small-scale platform at National Taiwan University (NTU) for people to learn new things by exchanging. The platform was called Skillhopping, which is the predecessor of Hahow, and it gained 3,000-plus users in two months without any marketing.    [FULL  INTERVIEW]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016/12/28
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Supreme Court judges on Wednesday upheld the death sentence for Lee Hung-chi, who has been sentenced to death by Taiwan High Court for killing his ex-wife and daughter.

Lee took his two daughters away from his ex-wife, surnamed Chen, when she was taking them to a kindergarten on a morning in April, 2014. After some pushing and shoving, Lee killed his ex-wife with a knife in front of the kindergarten with a crowd of people watching, and took his six-year-old daughter with him.

The next morning Lee and his daughter were spotted committing suicide by burning charcoal in his car in a mountainous area in Hsinchu County. Lee survived after being rescued, but his daughter died after treatment.

The Kaohsiung District Court sentenced him to 15 years in prison for killing his ex-wife, but gave him a life imprisonment sentence for killing his daughter.    [FULL  STORY]