Taipei Times
Date: Sep 19, 2016

While the leadership of the nation’s recent heads of state has seemingly run into criticism and has become a constant subject of debate within Taiwanese society, few have offered an objective discussion based on academic study of leadership. In a recent interview with ‘Liberty Times’ (sister newspaper of the ‘Taipei Times’) reporter Tzou Jiing-wen, former National Security Council secretary-general Ting Yu-chou offered his opinions on leadership in decisionmaking

Liberty Times (LT): How should leaders make decisions?
Ting Yu-chou (丁渝洲): Decisionmaking is the art of choosing. Everyone makes choices throughout their lives, and the quality of their decisionmaking makes success or failure in their lives. Decisionmaking is the most important and the most difficult. Leaders must take full responsibility for the operational outcomes of their organization and consider decisionmaking their unquestionable duty. To make and keep organizational success, its leadership necessarily has to make the right call at every crucial point in its history.

In recent years our government officials have made decisions of profoundly dubious procedural soundness and quality. I have been thinking on the reason why had these intellectuals and professional elite made decisions that clearly failed to withstand the tests. Decisionmaking is not merely a matter of logic; it requires experience, values and audacity.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: September 19, 2016
By: CNA

TAIPEI, Taiwan — An ultra low-profile national security conference was held recently in Taipei with more than 10 international experts in the fields of global, international and national security participating, including experts from NATO making their first visit to Taiwan.

A few think tanks and government agencies were also notified before the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on Sept. 15 this year, that a group of guests were to visit them, but the visits were to be kept a secret and the meetings held in closed-door form.

Such an arrangement has aroused curiosity about the identity of the visiting guests.

The mystery was solved after the Institute for Global Security and Defense Affairs (IGSDA), an online think tank, recently published on its website to confirm that the National Security Conference in Taiwan: Global and Regional Security Challenges and Threat to NATO & Asia was held in Taipei Sept. 12-13.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: September 18, 2016
By: CNA

TAIPEI — Google Inc. announced that an extended section of its FASTER submarine cable to Taiwan has been put into service, boosting the speed of data transmission in and out of the country and the computing power of its largest data center in Asia.

The cable connects Taiwan and Japan and is an extended section of the trans-Pacific cable linking to the United States that is being built by FASTER, a consortium of six companies that include Google, the company said.

It said the cable connecting Taiwan offers speeds of up to 26 terabits per second (Tbps) and will improve the computing power of Google’s data center in central Taiwan’s Changhua County — the company’s largest center in Asia.

This will enhance user experience with Google’s various online services, such as search, YouTube and Gmail, as well as for clients of the company’s advertising and cloud services, thanks to the faster data transmission speed from Taiwan to Japan and the U.S., as well as to other countries in Asia, according to Google.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 18, 2016
By: Jake Chung / Staff writer

Taking lessons from its landslide losses in the 2014 nine-in-one elections and this year’s presidential and legislative elections, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has started preparing for the 2018 elections with plans to foster 50 candidates in the hopes of retaking several districts, townships and cities, Chinese-language media reported yesterday.

According to a report published yesterday by the Chinese-language United Daily News, the KMT’s plan, dubbed the “Wulin Project” (武林計畫) — a play on the Chinese pronunciation of the target number of candidates, wuling — will not place a limit on a candidate’s age, but will require all potential candidates to participate in a forum detailing the party’s ideals on its charter and city governance.

KMT Vice Chairman Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and KMT Central Committee member Sean Lien (連勝文) have been active behind the scenes and have not ruled out directly providing resources to support young people to run in the elections, the report said.

Aside from the forum, young potential candidates will also have to accept the party’s arrangements on which electoral districts they would be running in, as well as participate in a “customized” training program, the report said, adding that the party seems to be targeting younger party members currently serving on city or county councils.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: September 17, 2016
By: CNA

TAIPEI–The German Trade Office Taipei (GTO) and the Taipei City government jointly held a green building design forum in Taipei on Tuesday to promote energy efficiency and increase opportunities for cooperation between German and Taiwanese businesses and experts.

At the opening of the forum, GTO Executive Director Andreas Hergenrother noted that the Taiwan government has set a goal of phasing out nuclear power by 2025.

In addition, the Taiwan government in 2015 enacted the Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce carbon dioxide emissions to half the level of 2005 by 2050, he said.

“In this aspect Germany and Taiwan share the same values and targets,” he said. “To achieve these targets a visible and reliable legal frame is needed, as well as the appropriate technological solutions.”     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/09/16
By: Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Sept. 16 (CNA) Several international and domestic flights scheduled in and out of northern Taiwan on Saturday have been canceled because of potentially harsh weather brought by Typhoon Malakas.

According to Civil Aeronautics Administration data, TransAsia Airways has canceled all of its domestic flights to and from Taipei Songshan Airport on Saturday, but will operate the rest of its flight schedule as normal.

Mandarin Airlines, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s largest carrier China Airlines (CAL), has canceled some of its domestic flights Saturday, including flights AE1261 and AE1262 between Taipei and Kinmen, flights AE391 and AE392 between Taipei and Taitung, and flights AE7931 and AE7932 between Kaohsiung and Hualien.

Uni Air, a subsidiary of EVA Airways, has said it will cancel all its domestic flights departing from or landing in Taipei, with a few exceptions.     [FULL  STORY]