Taiwan News
Date: 2015-08-18
By: Ko Lin, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je said he has come to a new understanding with Shanghai

Mayor Yang Xiong after the first day of talks aimed at forging closer ties between the two cities, reports said Tuesday.

“We will base future cross-strait talks on the common ground of ‘public initiation and government support,’” he said.

During the press conference, Ko again brought up the “new 2015 perspective” on cross-strait relations, saying it may become an important principle in cross-strait exchanges in the future.

In an interview with the Chinese media in early March regarding the 1992 Consensus, Ko said he understands and respects the consensus, however stressing that there are differences between international affairs and mainland affairs.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/08/18
By: Wang Cheng-chung and Y.F. Low

Taipei, Aug. 18 (CNA) Six Taiwanese tourists were among those injured in a huge bomb

explosion in central Bangkok on Monday, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.

At least 22 people were killed and 120 others were wounded at the explosion near the popular Erawan Shrine, according to foreign media reports.

The ministry said the injured people are being treated at 21 hospitals and that the Thai government has set up an emergency response center to deal with the situation.

Taiwan’s representative office in Thailand has sent officials to see the hospitalized Taiwanese nationals and has contacted their families in Taiwan, the ministry said.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/08/17
By: Lung Pei-ning and Maria Tsai

Taipei, Aug. 17 (CNA) Tri-Service General Hospital (三軍總醫院) held a party on Monday

to celebrate the rebirth of patients badly burned in a water park disaster in June, giving them a chance to share their ordeals over the past two months.

The hospital decided to hold the celebration on Monday as eight of the 61 burn victims the hospital has been treating were being discharged after undergoing painful surgical procedures and other treatments for nearly two months.

A teary-eyed Kuo Hsiu-ming (郭修銘), a 23-year-old man who suffered burns over 40 percent of his body, thanked hospital workers and his family and said that although he suffered great pain, he still felt grateful because other victims remain in critical condition.

His 19-year-old brother Kuo Chin-wei (郭晉瑋), who suffered burns over 10 percent of his body, said the stay in the hospital was not difficult because doctors and nurses treated him like a friend.     [FULL  STORY]

Sentinel Source
Date: August 17, 2015
By: Matt Nanci Sentinel Staff

For many students, this part of summer is spent going back-to-school shopping and

preparing for the inevitable reality that the first day of school is near.

But Keene New Hampshire’s (USA) Beatrice R. Hoffman is not a typical high school student.

She’s not getting ready to go back to Keene High School for her senior year. The 17-year-old put graduation on hold to travel more than 7,700 miles to where she’s going to spend the next nine months.

Beatrice is one of 620 students across the country who received a highly competitive National Security Language Initiative for Youth scholarship. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and seeks to increase the number of Americans who can engage with native speakers of languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Russian and Turkish.

She is going to Taiwan to study Chinese at the end of the month. She will live with a host family and go to school in Kaohsiung at the Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages.     [FULL  STORY]

rappler.com
Date: August 17, 2015
By: Victor Robert Lee

SINGAPORE – A time series of satellite images confirms that in 2014 and early 2015,

China constructed for military training purposes a building that closely resembles Taiwan’s Presidential Office Building in Taipei. The new building, at the expansive Zhurihe combat training base of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Inner Mongolia, is situated on a newly constructed grid of streets and buildings that has similarities to the center of Taiwan’s capital city.

A video that briefly showed PLA troops practicing an assault on the building, broadcast by CCTV on July 5, received marked attention in Taiwan when reported on July 22 by the Shanghai-based portal Guancha, and subsequently by Taiwan’s state-controlled Central News Agency, Apple Daily, and other outlets. A more detailed still image of the assault on the building appeared on China-based web portals, and was attributed to the PLA’s China Military Net website, but currently the image cannot be found on the website.     [FULL  STORY]

Daily Mail
Date: 17 August 2015
By Martha Cliff for MailOnline

McDonald’s is not always considered the most glamorous place to work, however one

server in Taiwan is bringing a little added allure to the counter.

Hsu Wei-han, whose age was not given, has been attracting plenty of customers to her branch of the fast-food chain in the city of Kaohsiung after she was discovered by a blogger.

RainDog spotted the doll-like beauty and noted that Wei-han, who is also known as ‘Weiwei’ or ‘Haitun’ (‘dolphin’ in Chinese), was cute and wore a pink shirt and heels.

A McDonald’s worker in Taiwan is boosting customer numbers after a blogger shared her photo online

Overnight the McDonald’s worker has rocketed to fame after the blog post received more than 6,000 likes.

She has been called the ‘cutest McDonald’s goddess in Taiwanese history’ after fans pointed out that the country’s branches are famous for dressing up their female employees in cute themed outfits, such as sailors or maids.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/08/17
By: Chen Wei-ting and S.C. Chang

Taipei, Aug. 17 (CNA) Five Taiwanese tourists at the site of an explosion in downtown Bangkok were injured, Taiwan’s representative office in Thailand said Monday night.

Four of the five were rushed to hospitals for treatment although their injuries are not life threatening, and the other suffered only minor injury.

At least 27 people, including foreign visitors, were killed and more than 80 injured at the Erawan Shrine explosion, according to reports by foreign wire services.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it has been in close contact with Thai police, who are identifying the nationalities of those killed and injured, and will provide necessary assistance.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-08-17
By: CNA and Staff Reporter

Security personnel deployed in front of Taiwan’s Presidential Office prevented a man

from apparently trying to set himself on fire Monday, authorities said. No one was injured in the incident and the man involved is understood to be the same man involved in another incident outside the Presidential Office earlier this year.

The man, who was only identified by his surname Lin, parked his light truck on Kategalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office, and began splashing gasoline on himself, according to the Taipei City Police’s First Precinct.

As he took a lighter from his pocket, the man was subdued by an unknown number of police officers and military police personnel deployed in front of the Presidential Office, the precinct said.

Lin, aged 37, was taken to a police station for questioning to determine his motive, the precinct said. One media report said he is a factory owner who has not been able to recruit enough workers.     [FULL  STORY]