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Abuse of foreigner on MRT sparks criticism of police

FOOT DRAGGING?Police arguments about jurisdiction meant MRT security footage was deleted before police viewed it. Police have questioned the Taiwanese suspect

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 13, 2015
By: Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

People First Party (PFP) Taipei City Councilor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday called for

A viral video of a Taiwanese man surnamed Liao, who is accused of hurling a torrent of racial abuse at a foreign resident on a train on Taipei MRT’s Tamsui-Xinyi line is pictured on Youtube. Screengrab from Youtube

A viral video of a Taiwanese man surnamed Liao, who is accused of hurling a torrent of racial abuse at a foreign resident on a train on Taipei MRT’s Tamsui-Xinyi line is pictured on Youtube. Screengrab from Youtube

better communication between Taipei City Police precincts in handling cases that take place in the city’s MRT system, after a foreigner posted a video showing that he and his Taiwanese girlfriend had been humiliated on an MRT carriage.

During a Taipei City Council question-and-answer session, Huang showed a video clip recorded last month by Christopher Raymond Hall, a Briton, which Hall uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday.

The footage showed Hall and his girlfriend being verbally abused on a train operating on the MRT Tamsui-Xinyi Line by a Taiwanese man, who subjected the couple to a barrage of racist remarks and personal attacks.

Huang questioned the efficiency of the city’s police system, saying that the police were unable to obtain footage of the incident from surveillance cameras installed on MRT trains because more than one week had passed before the police stations finally figured out who had jurisdiction over the case, and the footage had already been deleted.     [FULL  STORY]

Police see new leads in Peng’s murder case

Taiwan News
Date: 2015-11-12
By Ko Lin,  Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Kaohsiung City’s Chien-mei Hotel, now the Metropolitan Hotel, is seen in this file photo. The hotel was where DPP politician Peng Wan-ru was last seen getting into a taxi before she was raped and murdered in November 1996. Investigators are verifying whether fingerprints from a convicted drunk driver serving a sentence in Chiayi match those taken from where her body was found.

An investigation that has taken 19 years to see new leads saw light at the end of

the tunnel as a convict who was incarcerated in early June for drunk driving blabbered to his cellmate claiming he was the murderer, reports said Thursday.

Peng Wan-ru, then-director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s department of women’s affairs, was raped and stabbed to death after attending a DPP provisional national party congress on November 30, 1996. Peng, reported missing after leaving Kaohsiung’s Jianmei Hotel by taxi, was consequently found dead outside an abandoned warehouse in Kaohsiung’s Wusong District several days later.
At the time, more than 130,000 taxi drivers in the five counties and cities in the south were fingerprinted, but to no avail. The case has remained unresolved since then.
According to the Chinese-language Apple Daily, police began questioning the convict in June after words quickly spread within the penitentiary rumoring he was Peng’s murderer. The convict surnamed Yang, who was apprehended by the police for driving under the influence of alcohol, however denied such allegations.      [FULL  STORY]

Almost 40% of Taiwan firms will not pay year-end bonuses: poll

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/11/12
By: Tsai Yi-chu and Frances Huang
Taipei, Nov. 12 (CNA) Nearly 40 percent of employers in Taiwan have said they 51456530will not give year-end bonuses to their workers this time around as the domestic economy is slowing down and global demand is dropping, according to survey released Thursday.
The poll by local online job bank yes123 showed that while 38 percent of companies will maintain the tradition of paying their workers a bonus around the end of the current Lunar Year that wil fall in early next February, 52 percent will not, and 10 percent are still undecided.
However, among those companies that plan to pay bonuses, some in the high-tech and old economy sectors that depend heavily on exports will offer smaller bonuses than last year, said Yang Tsung-pin (楊宗斌), a spokesman for yes123.     [FULL  STORY]

DPP councilors slam Ko over excessive budget

Taiwan News
Date: 2015-11-11
By: Ko Lin, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Democratic Progressive Party city councilors slammed Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je for allocating

Councilors slam Ko over excessive budgets. Central News Agency

Councilors slam Ko over excessive budgets. Central News Agency

an excess budget of NT$1 billion (US$33 million) for events leading to next year’s World Design Capital promotion in Taipei, reports said Wednesday.

During a question-and-answer session at the Taipei City Council in the morning, Ko was asked about the NT$7.27 million (US$243,000) fee resulted from a lavish dinner reception at the W Hotel early last week, the mayor however responded that he is unaware of such expenditure.

The allocated budget, of which NT$500 million (US$16.7 million) had gone to the Taiwan Design Center (TDC) to host series of activities related to the event, was a topic of controversy in which Ko said his administration had not been part of.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan’s 1st proton therapy center opens in New Taipei

Taiwan Today
Date: November 11, 2015

Taiwan’s first proton and radiation therapy center was inaugurated Nov. 10 at Chang Gung

A medical specialist operates the robotic radiotherapy couch at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s new proton and radiation therapy center in New Taipei City’s Linkou District. (Courtesy of CGMH)

A medical specialist operates the robotic radiotherapy couch at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s new proton and radiation therapy center in New Taipei City’s Linkou District. (Courtesy of CGMH)

Memorial Hospital in Linkou District, New Taipei City, raising the bar for cancer treatment in the country.

The NT$5.4 billion (US$165.1 million) facility boasts four proton treatment and 10 X-ray treatment rooms, and is capable of providing linear accelerator treatment to 3,000 and proton beam treatment to 1,500 patients annually, according to CGMH.

Dr. Hong Ji-hong, vice president of the hospital, said proton therapy is one of the world’s most advanced and precise medical procedures designed to fight cancer.

“By utilizing a pencil-thin proton beam, the equipment can accurately target a tumor without damaging normal tissue,” he said. “The energy will only be released as it reaches the desired depth of the targeted site to kill off cancerous cells.”

In clinical trials, the therapy proves especially efficient when dealing with undisseminated local tumors, particularly skull base and paraspinal tumors, uveal melanomas and unresectable sarcomas, Hong added. A 30-minute proton therapy treatment session costs approximately NT$21,000.     [FULL  STORY]

International and cross-cultural on the dance menu this weekend

Between the multinational and multi-hued ‘Hui’ at the National Theater, ‘So Blue’ at the Experimental Theater and a festival of contact and dance improvisation at the Wellspring Theater, Taipei’s dance audiences are spoilt for choice

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 12, 2015
By: Diane Baker  /  Staff reporter

Taipei’s fall overload of dance programs is going strong this weekend, with three terrific

Hui, a joint production by Dance Forum Taipei and Chinese composer Tan Dun, opens tomorrow at the National Theater in Taipei as part of the NTCH’s Dancing in Autumn series. Photo courtesy of Chen You-wei

Hui, a joint production by Dance Forum Taipei and Chinese composer Tan Dun, opens tomorrow at the National Theater in Taipei as part of the NTCH’s Dancing in Autumn series. Photo courtesy of Chen You-wei

cross-cultural programs to choose from. The overload is having an impact at the box office, though, with many companies reporting slower ticket sales than normal because of the increased competition, something that is set to continue almost through the end of the year.

The National Theater Concert Hall’s (NTCH) Dancing in Autumn series has programs running in both the main theater, Hui (迴), and the Experimental Theater, So Blue, while the annual iDance Taipei festival opened its tent last night across town at the Wellspring Theater in the Gongguan (公館) area.     [FULL  STORY]

Pingtung banks on butterfly migration

TOURIST SPECTACLE:Pingtung County aims to capitalize on the annual migration of striped blue crow butterflies this year by holding companion events

Taipei Times
Date: Nov 10, 2015
By: Su Fu-nan and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The appearance of striped blue crow butterflies in Pingtung County’s Maolin National Scenic Area heralds the onset

A child points at a butterfly in Pingtung County’s Maolin National Scenic Area on Saturday. Photo: Su Fu-nan, Taipei Times

A child points at a butterfly in Pingtung County’s Maolin National Scenic Area on Saturday. Photo: Su Fu-nan, Taipei Times

of fall each year.

Millions of the butterflies migrate to Maolin to spend the winter, where they can be seen flying through the valleys in the area, which is a spectacular sight on a par with the migration of the monarch butterfly in South America, the area’s administrative office said.

The striped blue crow butterflies usually begin leaving the Maolin area after the Tomb Sweeping Festival and fly northwards to Miaoli County and the Jhunan District (竹南) of Hsinchu City, the office said.

However, due to a dry spell last year in southern Taiwan, the butterflies left the Maolin area in February and March, the office said, adding that it was a relief to see that the butterflies have returned to Maolin on schedule.     [FULL  STORY]

Xi met a yesterday man: TIME

Taiwan News
Date: 2015-11-10
By Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Chinese leader Xi Jinping met the wrong person at the wrong time, and no handshake will

Xi met a yesterday man: TIME. Associated Press

Xi met a yesterday man: TIME. Associated Press

win over the Taiwanese people’s sympathy, Time Magazine said in a report about last weekend’s summit with President Ma Ying-jeou.
The two leaders held a historic meeting in Singapore on Saturday, but international criticism focused on the event as a photo opportunity without much content.

“The handshake was long, 82 seconds, almost awkwardly so, and the smiles were stretched too, for the cameras,” Time’s Asia editor Zoher Abdoolcarim opened his report, available online Tuesday.

The writer described Ma as “a yesterday man,” referring to his poll ratings barely making double digits near the end of his final term. “A spotty economy during his tenure, infighting in a fragmenting KMT that lacks a coherent vision for Taiwan, and a broad slate of commercial agreements Ma reached with Beijing, have all conspired to hurt him,” Time wrote.     [FULL  STORY]

Dengue fever outbreak slows in Tainan, remains high in Kaohsiung

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/11/10
By: Chen Wei-ting and Kay Liu

Taipei, Nov. 10 (CNA) The southern city of Tainan has seen fewer new dengue fever cases, but the neighboring city 38886346of Kaohsiung remains at the peak of an outbreak of the disease there, according to data released Tuesday.

The total number of dengue fever cases since May 1 had climbed by 239 to 31,995 as of 6 p.m. Monday, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

In comparison, Taiwan reported a total of 15,732 dengue fever cases in 2014, which was the highest annual number since the authorities began keeping such records.

The two southern cities have been the worst-hit areas by the mosquito-borne disease, with Tainan confirming 33 new cases Monday, pushing the total number of cases to 22,195 since summer began.     [FULL  STORY]

KMT presidential candidate Chu starts US visit

Taiwan Today
Date: November 10, 2015

The ROC’s ruling Kuomintang Chairman Eric Chu embarked Nov. 10 on a seven-day visit to the U.S., with stops

Kuomintang Chairman Eric Chu outlines his campaign platform for next year’s ROC presidential election at an international media event Nov. 5 in Taipei City. (CNA)

Kuomintang Chairman Eric Chu outlines his campaign platform for next year’s ROC presidential election at an international media event Nov. 5 in Taipei City. (CNA)

planned in Los Angeles, Washington, New York and San Francisco.

During his stay, Chu is expected to exchange views with U.S. officials on such issues as bilateral ties, cross-strait policy, East Asian peace and regional economics, according to Lin Yi-hua, head of the KMT’s Culture and Communications Committee.
“The chairman will take this opportunity to strengthen the KMT’s relationship with its staunch U.S. allies, building on robust two-way interactions over the years,” Lin said. “He will also extend gratitude to local expatriate groups for their support of his presidential bid.”

Highlights of Chu’s trip include a discussion Nov. 13 at Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution, as well as an interview with The Washington Post the same day. These are in addition to a welcome party Nov. 12 hosted by Shen Lyu-shun, the ROC’s representative to the U.S., at the historic Twin Oaks Estate.

While in New York, Chu is scheduled to meet with nongovernmental organization National Committee on American Foreign Policy and give an interview with the Voice of America Nov. 14.    [FULL  STORY]