Want China Times
Date: 2015-10-22
By: CNA

The Tang Prize, Taiwan’s highest private award for global achievement, has

gained increasing global publicity following a report in the German weekly Die Zeit earlier this month that compared the prize with its global counterparts such as the Nobel prizes.

Covered by Die Zeit in its Oct. 8 edition, the Tang Prize was compared with other awards, including the Nobel prizes awarded by Norway and Sweden, the Kyoto Prize from Japan, and the Shaw Prize from Hong Kong.

The Tang Prize was described as “a biennial prize based out of Taiwan that is given in four categories: Sinology, Biopharmaceutical Science, Rule of Law, and Sustainable Development,” which the foundation said suggests the prize’s growing influence.

Further, the foundation cited Guenter Wermekes, the German finalist in the Tang Prize Medal Design Competition in 2013 as saying that the prize “seems to have become much more popular and important in the world, and among [the] German public.”     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date:  Oct 22, 2015
By: Abraham Gerber  /  Staff reporter

Members of the Taipei Dome Sub-Contractors Self Help Association

yesterday presented a petition to the Control Yuan calling for an investigation into the Taipei City Government’s decision to halt construction of the Taipei Dome.

After presenting the petition, association head Sam Hsu (許志霖) called on the Taipei City Government to publicize the list of construction plan violations on which its order is based, allowing the sub-contractors to move toward resuming construction by addressing the violations.

The legal basis for the construction halt is unclear because in normal circumstances planning violations are only subject to a NT$9,000 fine per violation, payable after construction is completed, he said.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-10-21
By: Liu Yung-hsiang and Staff Reporter

In 1984, Taiwan’s total fertility rate — the average number of children born to

a woman during her childbearing years — dropped below the “replacement level” of 2.1, and by 2010 had fallen to 0.895, the lowest in the world.

Although the birth rate rebounded to 1.17 in 2014, it remained the second lowest globally.

In recent years, the country’s government has introduced a number of policies to encourage people to have children but they have not been implemented in a cohesive manner, says Chyn Yu-rong, policy director at the Awakening Foundation, a local feminist organization.     [FULL  STORY]

WNAX News
Date: October 21, 2015

Taiwan is maintaining its position on banning the importation of U.S. pork

products produced with ractopamine, a commonly used growth promotant. Nick Giordano, National Pork Producer Council Vice President for Global Government Affairs, says the use of ractopamine or any other production practices should be up to the individual producer.

Taiwan officials say won’t lift their ractopamine pork ban but at the same time they want to join the Trans Pacific Partnership. Giordano says the ractopomine issue needs to be resolved now and not as part of that trade discussion.

Giordano says all the scientific evidence proves ractopamine is a perfectly safe product and should not be a barrier to trade.

Three years ago Taiwan lifted its ractopamine ban in beef but still maintains it for pork.
– See more at: http://wnax.com/news/180081-taiwan-sticking-to-ban-on-u-s-pork-produced-with-ractopamine/#sthash.953NUKxy.dpuf

Today Online
Date: October 22, 2015

TAIPEI — Taiwan’s ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday dismissed an

allegation that Beijing had demanded the withdrawal of a previous presidential nomination, which caused the concern of the United States.

“It is absolutely absurd,” KMT spokesman Yang Wei-chung said.

Mr Yang made the remark when fielding questions from Kyodo News, which asked him to comment on an article published in yesterday’s edition of the Apple Daily.

The commentary piece claimed that KMT chairman and the party’s presidential candidate Eric Chu is planning to visit the United States because he needs to go there to ease Washington’s concerns over Beijing’s demand that the KMT switch its presidential candidate.     [FULL  STORY]

American Enterprise Institute
Date: October 21, 2015
By: Sarah Gustafson

The Strategic Studies Institute recently published A Hard Look at Hard

Power: Assessing the Defense Capabilities of Key U.S. Allies and Security Partners. Edited by  Gary J. Schmitt, codirector of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at AEI, and featuring contributions from him, AEI scholar Michael Mazza, and others, it fills critical gaps in information “about the actual hard power resources of America’s allies.”

Taiwanese defense spending has fallen despite evidence of an immediate need for such investments. Michael Mazza explains that Taiwan’s unique missile defense program may be one of the few the nation continues to fund.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/10/21
By: Hsiao Po-yang and Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, Oct. 21 (CNA) Students from Taiwan and other countries launched a

100-kilometer journey Wednesday in which they will walk all the way from central Taiwan’s Changhua County to Shimen Reservoir in northern Taiwan to raise funds for a reservoir in Swaziland.

Some 100 high school students from Taiwan, the United States, Canada and Japan, who are participants of the annual International Youth Leadership Conference hosted by the National Changhua Senior High School, said they hope the event can win further support from general public.     [FULL  STORY]