The China Post
Date: December 4, 2016
By: The China Post news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Around 100 students and teachers from Mackay Junior College of Medicine,

Nursing, and Management on Saturday joined a hair donation campaign for cancer patients, getting their long hair cut to be made into wigs, Central News Agency reported.

The hair donation campaign was started by the college’s military instructor, Wang Fang-hui (王芳蕙), who called for participants in a Facebook post.

“It’s beyond my expectation that so many students and teachers have responded enthusiastically to the campaign,” Wang said.

One student spoke of her nervous and complicated feelings toward cutting off her long hair.

“Originally, I expected my hair to be cut only a little shorter, but I feel very nice about being able to help cancer patients with the longer length of hair,” she said.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: December 3, 2016
By: Christine Chou

Companies and governments eager to harness the enormous growth potential of the internet of things

(IoT) have rapidly produced millions of devices that could be hijacked in the service of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, security specialists said Friday.

DDoS attacks launch a flood of incoming messages to a system, essentially forcing it to shut down and deny service to users.

“New devices are being produced at an alarming scale,” said John McCloskey, senior vice president of global sales at content-delivery and cyber-security firm Akamai Technologies.

“We found (that) 5.5 million new things are getting connected each day … We are seeing that most companies — even governments, are relaxing important network security rules, and that needs to stop.

“I believe strongly in IoT, but we need to bring to IoT the same security governance in other networks we use.”

According to studies by the firm, the number of connected objects globally is estimated at approximately 22.9 billion, and is expected to reach 50 billion by 2020.

Akamai’s latest State of the Internet Security Report, which covers the third quarter of this year, says that DDoS attack volumes were up 71 percent compared with the same period last year.    [FULL  STORY]

First month will be free, second month half-price

Taiwan News
Date: 2016/12/02
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The highest price for a ticket on the Airport Mass Rapid Transit Line from Taipei Station to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport will cost NT$160 (US$5), with services likely to start before the Lunar New Year, reports said Friday.

Completion of the line has been delayed due to technical problems and construction disputes, with the latest expectation having trains start rolling next February. It should even be possible to have trains running by the start of the Lunar New Year holiday in late January, Taoyuan City Mayor Cheng Wen-tsang said Friday.

Ticket prices will vary depending on the distance traveled, he announced after a meeting of his government’s pricing review committee.

An independent review body, Ricardo Hong Kong Ltd., had already supplied the necessary safety certifications within the last few days, reports said, allowing another battery of tests to go ahead, probably this weekend. All work on the line would be completed before the Lunar New Year, Cheng said. This included seven days of major testing of the trains, he added.

The first month of operations, the rides would be free, while during the second month, travelers would pay half the official rate, according to Cheng.    [SOURCE]

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 03, 2016
By: Cheng Hung-ta and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The New Power Party (NPP) caucus yesterday proposed amendments to the Physicians Act (醫師法),

saying that the regulations limit access to medical resources for elderly people, those with chronic illnesses and people needing long-term care.

NPP caucus whip Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said advances in technology offer online communications as an alternative to daily meetings and it thinks the government should to look into whether such technology could be used to facilitate long-range medical care.

Article 11 of the act states that doctors must not offer any treatment or prescriptions unless they are in attendance. In an emergency or in cases in remote locations, the local government should appoint a doctor to prescribe medication or offer assistance via telecommunications and authorize medical facilities to carry out any procedure.

The appointment of doctors and the communication method is to be designated by the central government, it says.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: December 3, 2016
By: The China Post news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Animal quarantine authorities have stepped up a crackdown on illegal poultry farms

in a bid to contain the spread of bird flu.

With the neighboring countries of Japan and South Korea already hit by widespread bird flu outbreaks, poultry farms in Taiwan must be put under close monitoring, officials from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine (BAPHIQ) said Friday.

A Cabinet-organized nationwide meeting was held in Kaohsiung Friday afternoon to discuss ways to consolidate efforts to tackle bird flu, while BAPHIQ, part of the Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture, had already begun a joint campaign with local authorities last week to step up inspections of poultry farms, the officials said.

In November, 15 poultry farms were fined for violating the regulations, the BAPHIQ said, adding the respective local governments would assess the fines — ranging from NT$50,000 to NT$150,000 — for the violators.

According to BAPHIQ, poultry farms in Hungary, Austria and Sweden have recently reported cases of infections by the H5N8 bird flu virus. In Denmark, Holland, Poland, Germany, Switzerland and Croatia, the H5N8 virus has been detected on wild birds.

In Japan’s Niigata and Nagano, about 140,000 domesticated birds had been culled as of Nov. 28 due to bird flu outbreaks, according to BAPHIQ. In South Korea, more than 1.42 million birds from 41 H5N6-infected poultry farms have been culled.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: December 2, 2016
By: The China Post news staff

Minister without Portfolio Audrey Tang recently logged on to the popular web forum PTT to recruit

civil servants, as part of her efforts to promote the concept of “open government.”

Posting in the online bulletin board’s “PublicServan [sic] ” discussion area, Tang — popularly known as the country’s first “digital minister” — wrote a post to recruit civil service personnel, saying that candidates should be passionate about “government culture” and be internet literate in order to help consolidate, communicate and coordinate the government’s online initiatives.

“Do you believe certain agency deputies will be able to find these passionate individuals among the vast sea of civil servants? Perhaps they can, but let’s work to increase the chances,” Tang wrote under her username “audreytang.” Tang added that the offer was intended to staff agencies that are currently lacking manpower for online initiatives.    [FULL  STORY]

Tainan’s autumn precipitation was recorded at 1,338.2 millimeter, the highest in 120 years, according to the Central Weather Bureau (CWB).

Taiwan News
Date: 2016/12/01
By: Wendy Lee , Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Tainan’s autumn precipitation was recorded at 1,338.2 millimeter, the highest in 120 years, according

to the Central Weather Bureau (CWB).

CWB’s Southern Region Weather Center in Tainan has recorded a warm and wet autumn weather for Tainan, with cumulative precipitation total from September to November reaching 1,338.2 mm, far surpassing the previous record of 1956, which was recorded at 940.4 mm.

The latest statistics also revealed that Tainan’s precipitation this fall was six times more than the average rainfall in the same period from 1981 to 2010, which sets at 222.5 mm.

The southern Taiwan city also saw a warmer than average autumn up to this point, with average temperatures recorded at 26.7 degrees Celsius, only trailing behind 26.8 degrees in 2005, and 26.77 degrees in 2015, making it the third warmest autumn in 120 years on record.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/12/01
By: Tai Ya-chen and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Dec. 1 (CNA) The government will cancel subsidies to tour agencies serving the domestic

market if they are found to offer customers “zero dollar” tour packages, Cabinet spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said on Thursday.

Hsu said such tour packages run counter to the intent of the government’s subsidy program, which was introduced to address the difficulties faced by local travel agencies in the wake of a fall off in the number of travelers from mainland China.

Last month the government announced it would provide subsidies worth NT$300 million (US$9.54 million) to businesses in the tourism sector that have suffered losses due to the steep decline in the number of Chinese tour groups and help them to produce tour packages aimed at local travelers.

However, since the subsidy program was launched, some of the target tour operators have reportedly been offering customers “free-of-charge” tour packages for those in tour groups, to boost the amount of subsidy to which the company is entitled.    [FULL  STORY]