Ogasawara is a resident of the disaster-stricken Iwate region

Taiwan News 
Date: 2017/12/02
By: Matthew Strong,Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A Japanese man cycled around Taiwan for the fourth time to express his gratitude

for Taiwanese aid in the wake of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, reports said Saturday.

The man, Tamami Ogasawara, lives in Iwate Prefecture, a region of Northeast Japan which was badly hit by the quake, which also triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The Japanese man visited Taiwan’s Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation (慈濟基金會) on December 1 to thank both Taiwan and the organization for their efforts in providing relief to the disaster victims, the Central News Agency reported.

At first, residents did not have anything, but when they again had the necessary food a week after the quake, they were still short of warm clothing and housing, Ogasawara said. At that moment, they received clothes and blankets from Taiwan, bringing warmth and comfort to survivors facing a cold spring, he said.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/12/02
By: Worthy Shen and Romulo Huang 

Taipei, Dec. 2 (CNA) The 2017 Jiaoxi Hot Spring Festival in Yilan County opened Saturday with a series of cultural and artistic performances and exhibitions featuring cultural exchanges and demonstration of the friendship that exists between Taiwan and Japan.

A total of 34 groups from Taiwan and Japan, comprising a total of more than 1,000 members, including a Hanagasa (flower hat) dance troupe from Japan’s Yamagata Prefecture and a Sansa dance troupe from Iwate Prefecture, participated in a parade through the streets of Jiaoxi Township to mark the opening of the annual festival.

During the festival, which will run through Dec. 31, there will be artistic performances and exhibitions of creative cultural products at the main venue of the event on weekends from 2 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., the organizers said.    [FULL  STORY]

‘CONDITIONAL’? If the Democratic Progressive Party nominates its own candidate for the Taipei mayoral election next year, the New Party will throw its support behind Ko

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 03, 2017
By: Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) said he would throw his conditional support behind

independent Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) re-election bid, saying Ko’s cross-strait direction is similar to that of his party.

Yok made the remarks in response to media inquiries about next year’s local elections during a gathering with New Party supporters in New York on Friday evening.

“We have our strategies for Taipei. If the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] does not field its own candidate for the capital’s mayoral election, the New Party will field one,” Yok said.

If the DPP nominates its own candidate, the New Party will throw its support behind Ko, Yok said, adding that Ko’s stance on maintaining cross-strait interaction corresponds with that of the New Party, a smaller Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) spin-off that advocates for peaceful unification.

Ko, an independent who has described himself as being “deep green” on the traditional blue-green political spectrum, won the mayorship in 2014 thanks in part to the DPP’s decision to cooperate with him by not nominating its own candidate.

However, Ko and the DPP have become estranged, particularly after Ko categorized the nature of cross-strait relations as “both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family” at the 2015 Taipei-Shanghai forum in China.    [FULL  STORY]

Lin said that with the hike of fuel prices and the trend of aging population and low fertility in Taiwan, the government will have to think about how to solve the tough problem

Taiwan News 
Date: 2017/12/01
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—A Taiwanese bus company has recently announced that it would

cancel senior discounts due to loss, which caused the authorities to scurry to persuade the company to drop the plan.

Solar bus company currently operates six bus routes, four of which run between four different towns in southwestern Taiwan and Taipei, and two are local routes.

Solar general manager Lin Tse-min (林澤民) said on Friday that since Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) began operations in January 2007, many passengers who paid the full price adult fare have gradually switched to THSR. In the past, only about 20% of Solar passengers paid the half-priced fare, but today’s the percentage is about 33% and even as high as 50% during rush hours, making it much harder for the company to operate in the black, he said.     [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-12-01

Premier William Lai says the proportion of low-wage earners in the country is decreasing.

Lai was speaking Friday, referring to people who earn less than NT$30,000 (US$1,000) per month.

Government figures say almost 9 million people were employed in May, earning an average of US$1,256 per month. Among them, nearly 34% brought home a paycheck of less than US$1,000, which is slightly lower than last year’s 36.7%.

Lai said the government’s top priority is to boost the economy and results have been achieved. The premier said, “This year’s economic growth is likely to stand at 2.5%, which is a departure from the under 1% registered in the past few years. This is the result of our joint efforts as the unemployment rate has also dropped to 3.75%. Although there has been no visible change in real wages, the average paycheck has increased. The proportion of earners making less than US$1,000 a month has dropped. Even though they account for nearly one third of the workforce, the figure has been on the decrease year by year if we take a look at the trend.”    [SOURCE]

Taiwanese scientists have recorded the world’s longest-lasting rainbow at nearly 9 hours

Taiwan News 
Date: 2017/12/01
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Two Taiwanese scientists claim to have recorded the longest-

lasting rainbow in history, which they measured as persisting nearly nine hours at Chinese Culture University (CCU) in Taipei on Nov. 30.

The rainbow was recorded on Nov. 30 by Chou Kun-hsuan (周昆炫) and Liu Ching-huang (劉清煌), both professors in the Department of Atmospheric Science, as they stood on the roof of the Dayi Building on the campus of CCU.

According to Chou, the rainbow started at 6:57 a.m. and lasted until 3:55, or 8 hours and 58 minutes. If confirmed, this would shatter the previous record set in Wetherby in Yorkshire UK on Mar. 14, 1994, which was recorded as lasting from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., or 6 hours.

CCU, Taipei, Taiwan.

The world record was an accident, the two professors were originally tracking the rainbow to prove a theory that they descend seven degrees every 30 minutes. On Monday Nov. 27, the professors had a preview of what was to come when they recorded a rainbow that lasted six hours.

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/12/01
By: Christie Chen

Taipei, Dec. 1 (CNA) An exhibition opened in Taipei on Friday that is showcasing over

100 designs that have won or made it to the finals of the Golden Pin Design Award and Golden Pin Concept Design Award Design Mark.

Among the works on display are a mechanical arm by the company Techman Robot with a built-in intelligent vision system, a 4th dimension mechanical watch by 22 Design Studio, and 3-wheel scooter 3D-350 by Aeon Motor.

Also on exhibit are “Elbow,” a portable cassette player created by Lithuanian designers Andrius Zemaitis and Marius Maulikas, and “Bamboodia,” a low-cost prosthetic made from bamboo by Tunghai University students that was designed for teenagers injured by landmines.    [FULL  STORY]