Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/04/28
By Chen Yen-chun and Kuan-lin Liu

Taipei, April 28 (CNA) The Taipei City government signed the official documents on

Friday for the construction of a new mosque in city, which will be a joint project with the government of Turkey, Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said Saturday.

Speaking at the 58th anniversary ceremony of the Taipei Grand Mosque, Ko said Taipei has decided to build another mosque to accommodate the growing Muslim population in the country.

He said the city government is looking at two sites for the construction of a complex capable of accommodating 50,000 people, but he did not disclose which locations were being considered.

The idea of building a third mosque in Taipei, at a cost of millions of U.S. dollars, was proposed by Turkey in January, according to Ko.   [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-04-27

President Tsai Ing-wen has vowed to develop Taiwan’s aviation industry. The president

was speaking Friday while visiting Air Asia Company Limited (AACL), a Tainan-based company specializing in aircraft maintenance and defense.

The visit is the first stop on a two-day trip to inspect industries targeted by the government for special support. The government is planning to pour resources into the Internet of Things (IoT), biomedicine, green technology, smart machinery, defense industry, high value-added agriculture and a circular economy.

Tsai said the defense industry concerns Taiwan’s national security and is also a vital source of domestic demand.

“Building our own planes is our leading policy. Besides [this], we also want to improve manufacturing of peripherals. Today we are visiting a place which is a major indicator of our maintenance industry. Building our own planes is a stated policy and direction. We have the confidence and the determination to develop our defense aviation industry,” said Tsai.

Tsai said AACL will prove that its aircraft maintenance ability will not only boost Taiwan’s defense capability, but will also create business opportunities when its technology is transferred to the domestic market.    [FULL  STORY]

A poll finding suggests that to fend off the KMT in Taipei, President Tsai Ing-wen’s DPP would benefit from running its own candidate rather than backing the incumbent mayor.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/04/27
By: Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文)

Taiwan’s ruling party is engaged in an internal debate on whether to back a candidate in this year’s election for mayor of the nation’s capital, Taipei City. President and Democratic Party Chairwoman Tsai Ying-wen (蔡英文) and top party officials are coming under increasing pressure from local Taipei City politicians and supporters to choose a candidate.

On April 22, over 10,000 protested, calling on the party to nominate DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智). The march was backed by some prominent DPP politicians and over 90 percent of the city’s DPP city councilors.

And yet, with the clock ticking on the November election, Tsai dithers.

In the last local elections in 2014 the then-ruling Kuomintang (KMT) were swept from power across the nation, only barely holding on to one major city and a few very small local governments. The DPP swept most races, but looking weak in Taipei the party backed the blunt-speaking, political neophyte independent candidacy of surgeon Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who went on to a stunning win. Doctor Ko, nicknamed “Ko P,” poached supporters from all parties, including the KMT – the party that with few exceptions dominated the city for generations.    [FULL  STORY]

‘The fluidity of what we do is our strength; we can be in any part of the city that we want to be in’.

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/04/27
By: Te’Qin Windham, Taiwan News, Staff Reporter

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — This Saturday, Level Up Experiences will host their third

anniversary commemoration with a soiree comprised of live music, cocktails, and a community of people who have worked together to redefine what a night in Taipei can look like: “Anything that we want.”

The celebration will take place this Saturday at Smexy in Taipei. It will begin at 7:30 pm and feature musical artists Brandon Thompson and Xiao Case band.

Founder, Daniel Black (30), from New York City, articulates his excitement of the upcoming festivity, “It’s going to be fun, it’s just going to be an interesting level of collaboration with people that we’ve known for so long. It is a much more refined event; we’re getting dressed up”.

“This one is a good culmination of people that we’ve known and gotten to know along the way. It will be a celebration of the people that we’ve worked with before, showing up, giving props and showing love”.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/04/27
By: Huang Tzu-chiang and Ko Lin

Singapore, April 27 (CNA) Taiwan on Friday managed to beat out several other contenders to win a national team culinary award at the biennial Food and Hotel Asia (FHA) trade fair held at Singapore Expo and Suntec Singapore.

Held every two years, the FHA is the largest international food trade show in Asia. This year, it has brought together more than 4,000 exhibitors from 70 countries.

The National Team Challenge has been part of the culinary trade event since its establishment 40 years ago and is staged once every four years.

At the national team event, the Taiwanese team managed to beat out nine other countries, including Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand and host country Singapore, to clinch this year’s the Best National Team Award.    [FULL  STORY]

While much of Asia backslides, Taiwan remains a bastion of media freedom.

The Diplomat
Date: April 27, 2018
By: Shannon Tiezzi

The Paris-based NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has released its annual World Press Freedom Index, which ranks 180 countries according to “an evaluation of pluralism, independence of the media, quality of legislative framework and safety of journalists.” The 2018 report was overall a pessimistic one, with RSF noting in its summary that “[h]ostility towards the media from political leaders is no longer limited to authoritarian countries.”

There were some bright spots, however, one of which is Taiwan.

Taiwan placed 42nd out of 180 countries, making it the highest-ranking country in East Asia, just ahead of South Korea at 43rd. That’s not an aberration. In fact, RSF chose Taiwan as the location for its first Asia bureau, which opened in 2017, in part because of “its status of being the freest place in Asia in our annual Press Freedom Index ranking.”

New Zealand (eighth) and Australia (19th) topped the rankings for the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea were the only Asia-Pacific countries to be placed in RSF’s “fairly good” category, with New Zealand as the lone “good” representative. Fellow democracy Japan fell into the “problematic” category, while much of the rest of Asia was considered either “bad” (India, Pakistan, and most of Southeast Asia, for example) or “very bad” (China, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea) for press freedom.    [FULL  STORY]

On the hunt for the best surf, Edward White discovers an island on the cusp of change

Financial Times
Date: April 26, 21018
By: Edward White 

Driving around a tight bend on a road carved high into cliffs on Taiwan’s east coast, the first sight of the vast Pacific Ocean instantly hijacks the attention. Tracking lines of swell stretching into a sapphire horizon, it is a challenge not to drift across the median line.

This highway connects small industrial and fishing hubs dotted between the island’s northern Yilan and central Hualien counties. As I dragged a beaten-up white Ford around its corners in pursuit of uncrowded surf over the past few years, I have often thought about a compatriot who travelled this road some 70 years earlier.

Allan J Shackleton was a rare western witness to the chaotic and murderous early days of the Kuomintang’s rule of Taiwan. The New Zealand-born UN officer was here in the late 1940s, when Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated Chinese Nationalist army fled to the island from Mao Zedong’s China, quickly seizing control of the government and industries and brutally cracking down on any perceived opposition.    [FULL  STORY]