Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/06/25
By: Chang Ming-hsuan, Tyson Lu and Kuo Chung-han

Taipei, June 25 (CNA) With the arrival of summer in Taiwan, hundreds of people have been suffering heat-related illnesses, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Sunday.

Since the start of June, 318 cases of heat-related illness have been reported across the country, with 80 of them occurring between June 22 and 24, according to statistics from the ministry.

Temperatures have been soaring in Taiwan in recent days, reaching as high as 38.2 degrees Celsius shortly after noon Saturday in Dawu Township in Taitung County, Central Weather Bureau (CWB) data showed.

The high temperature was attributed to Foehn winds, a type of dry, warm, down-slope wind that occurs in Dawu, which is on the eastern side of the Central Mountain Range.    [FULL  STORY]

Parents left in debt after Chi Po-lin’s June 10 helicopter crash

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/06/24
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Foxconn Technology Group Chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) and his entourage

donated NT$30 million (US$987,000) to the parents of award-winning documentary maker Chi Po-lin (齊柏林), who died in a helicopter crash on June 10.

His movie “Beyond Beauty – Taiwan from Above” (看見台灣) won numerous awards and fixed the public’s attention on both the beauty of the island and on damage by pollution. Chi died along with the pilot and an assistant as they were working on a sequel.

On the day a commemorative exhibition opened in Taipei Saturday, reports said that Gou, his wife and senior executives at Foxconn, better known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (鴻海精密工業) inside Taiwan, personally visited Chi’s family and made the unconditional donation.
[FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: June 24, 2017
By: CNA

LOS ANGELES — Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德), who recently described himself as being “pro-

China,” said Thursday that his pro-Taiwan independence stance remains unchanged.

Earlier this month, the pro-independence mayor surprised the public when he said he is “pro-China as much as he loves Taiwan.”

The matter aroused great interest among the Taiwanese expatriate community in the United States during Lai’s current visit there.

Asked about the matter by a member of the audience after giving a speech in Los Angeles on Thursday, Lai said “pro-China, love Taiwan” means reaching out the hand of friendship to China, with Taiwan as the center, in the hope of enhancing mutual understanding and reconciliation and facilitating the peaceful development of cross-Taiwan Strait relations.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan Internartional
Date: 2017-06-23

Taipei’s mayor, Ko Wen-je, has touted the benefits for new immigrants to Taiwan of learning the local

language. Ko was speaking Friday as he spoke with new citizens who have been taking classes in the Minnan variant of Hokkien, also known as Hoklo or, simply, Taiwanese.

Ko said Taipei now has hundreds of classes aimed at helping new Taiwanese citizens settle in the country. He said there are now 500,000 naturalized citizens in the country, some 350,000 of them based in Taipei. Over 90% of these are mainland Chinese spouses of Taiwanese partners, with others coming from countries in Southeast Asia.

While Mandarin Chinese is the official language in Taiwan, Taiwanese is widely spoken colloquially and especially outside of the capital Taipei. Ko said learning Taiwanese has a number of benefits for new arrivals seeking to assimilate.    [FULL  STORY]

Results of a survey released Wednesday show more than 50 percent of people want a nuclear-free Taiwan.

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/06/23
By: Juvina Lai,Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – According to a survey published Wednesday, more than 50 percent of respondents said they opposed the idea of paying higher electricity rates in return for the elimination of nuclear power.

The government has set 2025 as the year by which Taiwan should become nuclear-free.

About 52.6 percent did not agree to pay higher power prices for the goal of making Taiwan nuclear free, but about 42.3 percent of the people said they were willing to do so, according to the results of the survey by the National Policy Foundation, a Taipei-based think tank affiliated with the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), to gauge the public’s opinion of the Democratic Progressive Party government’s energy policy.

The survey also revealed that 53.9 percent of the people said they did not agree with the idea of shutting down Taiwan’s three nuclear power plants, while 33 percent still agreed.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/06/23
By: Chiang Yuan-chen and Elizabeth Hsu

Incheon, South Korea, June 23 (CNA) The chairman of the Korea Association of Travel Agents expressed the hope Friday that the number of visitors traveling between Taiwan and South Korea can be increased 50 percent in a year to at least 3 million by 2018.

A concerted effort will be made to expand transportation platforms in pursuit of that goal, said Yang Moo Seung (梁武承) at the annual Taiwan-South Korea Tourism Exchange Meeting in Incheon-Songdo on Friday.

He said he was hopeful that a big boost in tourism with Taiwan could be achieved and vowed to expand transportation platforms for travelers.

Taiwan Visitors Association Chairwoman Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭) attended the event with a Taiwanese delegation made up of representatives from local travel agencies, hotels, airlines, theme park operators and the municipal city governments of Taipei, Tainan and Kaohsiung.    [FULL  STORY]