The China Post
Date: October 31, 2016
By: The China Post news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Fourteen brides and grooms were married at a mass wedding

ceremony held by Indonesian Economic and Trade Office to Taipei (IETO) on Sunday.

The seven couples, all in their 20s or 30s, exchanged their wedding vows in a Muslim wedding ceremony, called a “ijab qobul,” held in the IETO’s office.

The ceremony was held to ensure that the couples’ vows would be recognized in their home country, with all of them receving Indonesian government-certified marriage certificates.

Making the knot-tiers’ happy day even happier were wedding gifts provided by sponsors, including jewelry (as a wedding dowry), saving accounts, free hotel stays, wedding makeup and pre-wedding and wedding photos.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016/10/30
By: Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Former President Chen Shui-bian, with his wife, Wu Shu-jen, attended a concert in his

honor in Kaohsiung City on Sunday.

The former First Couple are both on medical parole while serving corruption sentences. Sunday’s appearance was the couple’s first public appearance in Kaohsiung after not being seen together for a long time.

Chen was seen walking into the concert hall with a stick and the support from a medical team member and a caregiver, and was met with cheering support from the audience. The concert was organized by Taiwanese songwriter Cheng Chih-jen to honor the former president.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/10/25
By: Hsieh Chia-chen and Lilian Wu

Taipei, Oct. 25 (CNA) There will be seven people on each side at a high-profile

meeting between opposition Kuomintang (KMT) Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and Xi Jinping (習近平), China’s president and general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), next month.

The meeting will be held at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People Nov. 1, one day before the opening of the Nov. 2-3 Cross-Strait Peace Development Forum, formerly the “Cross-Strait Trade, Economy and Culture Forum.”

The forum, also known as the KMT-CPC Forum, has been held 10 times since 2006 and has become an important platform for interaction and dialogue between the two parties.     [FULL  STORY]

Suspect made NT$100 million over 3 years, prosecutors say

Taiwan News
Date: 2016/10/28
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The honorary chairman of an association of traders in Chinese

medicine had made close to NT$100 million (US$3.16 million) by importing and selling banned rhinoceros horns, the Taipei District Prosecutors Office said Friday.

The man, named as Lien Chun-ying, was questioned about violations of laws protecting wildlife and later freed after posting NT$1 million in bail, prosecutors said. Elephants and rhinos in Africa have been hunted close to extinction by poachers because their horns sell as medicine, often in Asia.

Over the course of the past three years, Lien reportedly had the rhino horns imported hidden inside containers with other products, and sold them through online groups.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/10/29
By: Claudia Liu and Lilian Wu

Taipei, Oct. 29 (CNA) The six people who will travel with opposition Kuomintang (KMT)

Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) to China for a cross-strait forum have been finalized.

In addition to Hung, the other six members on the delegation are KMT Vice Chairmen Jason Hu (胡志強) and Steve Chan (詹啟賢), Huang Ching-hsien(黃清賢), director of the party’s Department of Mainland Affairs, Tsai Cheng-yuan (蔡正元), executive director of KMT’s Policy Committee, former deputy secretary general Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭) and Taipei City Council Speaker Wu Bi-chu (吳碧珠).

Hung will lead the seven-member delegation to China on Sunday night and visit Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum in Nanjing on Oct. 31.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Oct 30, 2016
By: Nadia Tsao / Staff reporter in Washington

A top US diplomat said that “US-Taiwan relations have never been better.”

In an interview with the Taipei Times, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia Susan Thornton said that from the US’ perspective, “we really have a good foundation to carry through the end of this administration and the transition to the new administration in the US.”

Thornton assumed the post in February. She joined the US Department of State in 1991 and has served in Taipei and China’s Beijing and Chengdu.

Thornton emphasized that Taiwan and the US are continuing all kinds of robust cooperation in many areas and that close Taiwan-US ties are extremely popular in the US.

Although there has been rhetoric urging a review of the relationship during the US election season, she said that everything that the US does with Taiwan enjoys bipartisan support and “Taiwan would never be abandoned.”   [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: October 30, 2016
By: CNA

Two women in wedding gowns hold hands while marching in the gay pride parade on Saturday, Oct. 29, surrounded by thousands of LGBT activists and their supporters. The Legislature is expected to soon begin reviewing bills that would legalize same-sex marriage.   [SOURCE]

High ranking members of the defense industry from both the U.S. and Taiwan were among the people targeted by the attack.

The News Lens
Date: 2016/10/28
By: ZiQing Low

A U.S.-based security firm has revealed that Chinese hackers targeted participants at

the 2016 United States – Taiwan Defense Industry Conference organized by the U.S-Taiwan Business Council in Virginia Oct. 2-4, the Chinese-language Liberty Times reports.
Steven Adair, the founder of security company Volexity, said participants at the conference who were targeted received an e-mail that contained information about the first event at the conference and an attached document, all written in Chinese, the United Daily News reported.

The e-mails containing malware appeared to have been sent from a Taiwanese “hinet.net” domain that actually originated from Chinese servers.    [FULL  STORY]

New study finds that men who experience the ‘Asian flush’ when drinking alcohol are twice as likely to have a stroke

Taipei Times
Date: 2016/10/28
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in Taiwan, and the factors that can lead to

stroke are numerous, including age, hypertension, diabetes, high blood lipids, heart disease, atrial fibrillation, smoking and so on. But a new study found that men who experience the so-called “Asian flush” are nearly twice as likely to have a stroke as the general population. The results of the study were published in the International Journal of medicine article titled “Stroke” in September.

The enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH2) plays a crucial role in human metabolism of alcohol, but people who easily become flushed even after only having one drink, may have the genetic mutation of this enzyme responsible for what is often referred to as the Asian flush or “Asian glow” response. Two alleles of ALDH2 — ALDH2*1 and ALDH2*2 — are genetic mutations that most often appear in populations of East Asian countries such as China, where about 35% of the population has the mutation, while 30% of Japanese and 20% of Koreans have the variant. Taiwan has the dubious distinction of having the highest Asian flush rate in the world at 47%.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/10/28
By: Chang Jung-hsiang and Lilian Wu

Taipei, Oct. 28 (CNA) An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) went missing while

undergoing a routine training in a mountainous part of Chiayi County on Thursday, the Army Aviation and Special Forces Command confirmed Friday.

It said the UAV took off from Chiayi on Thursday afternoon on a routine training mission. Air traffic controllers on the ground lost contact with the vehicle as it was flying near Zhuqi in Chiayi County.

The Army has yet to establish why contact with the vehicle was lost, but it is searching for the missing UAV and has grounded similar vehicles.

The UAV can conduct military missions such as daytime and nighttime reconnaissance and war zone management, and can also carry out such tasks as monitoring national lands and inspecting disasters.     [SOURCE]