President Tsai Ing-wen wholeheartedly supports the sentiments expressed in Pope Francis’s papal message for World Day of Peace 2018 entitled “Migrants

Taiwan News  
Date: 2018/01/15
By: Taiwan Today,Agencies

President Tsai Ing-wen recently responded to Pope Francis’s papal message for World Day of Peace 2018, supporting his call to embrace those fleeing from war and hunger, or forced by discrimination, persecution, poverty and environmental degradation to leave their homelands.

“The people of Taiwan feel deeply for these people, as their plight reflects our own history, a story of immigrants struggling through blood, sweat, toil and tears,” Tsai said in a letter to the pope. Countries around the world should view the phenomenon of global migration with confidence and see it not as a threat, but as an opportunity for peace, she added.

According to Tsai, the earliest inhabitants of Taiwan were Austronesians and the first wave of large-scale immigration began 300 years ago when people crossed the Taiwan Strait to escape desperate poverty. “Another large wave came in 1949, when some 2 million immigrants were compelled to flee mainland China and came to Taiwan,” she said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/01/15
By: Wang Shu-fen and Evelyn Kao 

Taipei, Jan. 15 (CNA) Chunghwa Post Co., Taiwan’s national postal service, officially put 1,627 electric scooters into service Monday as part of a company plan to phase out its entire fleet of nearly 9,000 gasoline-powered motorcycles by 2023.

In line with the Cabinet’s new air pollution control action plan, the state-run company last year began planning to gradually phase out its gasoline-powered motorcycles and replace them with electric ones, said Deputy Transportation Minister Wang Kwo-tsai (王國財).

The air pollution control action plan, unveiled last year, lays out several targets: cut in half the number of air quality red alert days by 2019, replace all public vehicles with electric-powered ones by 2030, and require all scooters and cars to go electric by 2035 and 2040, respectively.    [FULL  STORY]

While imperialism may result in some benefits for those under rule, weighing up individual cases of good and bad misses a crucial point about the structures of empire

South China Morning Post
Date: 14 JAN 2018
By: Rana Mitter

Taiwan’s politics, even today, is shaped by the memory of the years when Chiang Kai-

shek’s Nationalists ruled the island during the cold war. The battle between the “mainlanders” who poured in at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and the indigenous Taiwanese still resonates in today’s politics.

In contrast, one other relatively recent historical experience seems much less relevant: the period of Japanese colonial rule over Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. The younger generation hardly talk about those years. The older generation – and one has to be in one’s 80s or older to have any real memory of the period – often speak of the Japanese occupation with equanimity, even nostalgia.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-01-14

Authorities say a fourth poultry farm in the central Taiwan county of Yunlin has been

infected with the H5N2 strand of bird flu. Officials from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine moved quickly to slaughter the birds, culling 3,915 ducks.

The bureau put out a press release on Thursday detailing its efforts to stem the spread of bird flu from the farm in Dongshi Township. That included overseeing the cleaning and disinfection procedures at the farm.

Officials say that this is the sixth farm in Taiwan to report a bird flu outbreak so far this season. Nearly 70,000 birds have been culled to date.    [FULL  STORY]

The combined allowed capacity of these two terminals is 34 million passengers a year, but 44 million passengers passed through the airport last year, according to the CAA

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/01/14
By: George Liao,Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)–Taoyuan International Airport served 45 million passengers in

2017, 10 million more passengers than the allowed capacity, according to the latest statistics of Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA).

Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Co. has been facing more pressure from increasing numbers of passengers passing through the airport. The coming Chinese New Year holiday season is likely to pose a great challenge to the airport as the number of passengers will surge during this period of time.

Taoyuan Airport spokesman Lee Chien-kuo (李建國) said numbers of passengers passing through the airport have increased too rapidly. Even though numbers of Chinese visitors to Taiwan have fallen, the decrease was more than compensated by the increase of both visitors from countries other than China and Taiwanese making tourist visits overseas, he said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 01/13/2018

Tagalog, Bahasa and Vietnamese taught in Taiwan’s schools? That’s right! Starting next year, Taiwan will begin requiring all schools with children born to a Southeast Asian immigrant to teach the language of that parent. Right now, the only mother tongues schools have to teach are Minnan, Hakka, and indigenous languages. But in 2019, schools will have to teach some or all of the languages spoken in seven Southeast Asian countries: Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Cambodia. Taoyuan City’s Dongan Elementary School has already been doing this for the past five years. Take a look.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan is blessed with natural beauty, scenic areas, great food, astonishing history and culture. This makes it a great destination for the Indian traveller.

Hindustan Times
Date: Jan 13, 2018
By: Indo Asian News Service

The Indian market is one of the fastest growing in the world with travellers from the

country among the worlds highest spenders, says Trust Lin, Director of Taiwan Tourism Board. “Indian tourists are among the world’s highest-spending globetrotters. Their spending power has been estimated to be four times that of the Chinese and Japanese,” Lin told IANS in an e-mail interview from Singapore.

“Today, the Indian market is one of the fastest growing in the world and the Indian traveller is now among the world’s highest spender. We are very keen to get our share of this potential market and Indian agencies are also very eager to know about the Taiwan market,” he added. Lin said India is indeed a growing market for Taiwan tourism.

“Taiwan has received a good response from the Indian travellers over the last few years, especially since our Group Visa policy was introduced,” he said. “We are confident that with the newly evolving Indian traveller will find a unique appeal for Taiwan.”    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-01-13

President Tsai Ing-wen has traveled to Nantou County in central Taiwan as the

campaign season for local elections at the end of the year begins.

Tsai was in Nantou County Saturday to support her party’s candidate for county head, Hung Kuo-hao.

Party officials say Tsai’s choice of Nantou County as her first stop on behalf of local candidates shows her optimism that the county can be flipped to her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). They say that while the current county head, Lee Ming-chen, belongs to the opposition KMT, his 2014 election was won by a margin of only around 5000 votes.

DPP Secretary-General Hung Yao-fu says that Tsai’s next appearances in support of local candidates are still being planned. Hung said that Tsai must balance her two roles as president and as DPP chairperson.    [SOURCE]