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White Rose calls for forceful death penalty enforcement

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-10
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

The White Rose Social Care Association will take to the streets to call for 6747075the government to more forcefully enforce capital punishment and ensure better protection for younger generations on Sunday afternoon, about two weeks after the brutal random killing of a four-year-old girl in Neihu, Taipei on March 28.

The association has called on adults to wear black clothes, children to wear white clothes, and everyone to hold a white rose in their hands for the gathering on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office at 2 p.m.

The activity is to spur the government to enforce the current laws, to give death penalty to those who deserve it and carry out without any delays, the association said.

The association said that Taiwan is neither in a good position to abolish capital punishment nor has enough budgets to “civilize” those who deserve a death sentence. The association also called for capital punishment for drug lords and life imprisonment without parole for those who are convicted of committing serious crimes after taking drugs.     [FULL  STORY]

Traffic jam as Taipei region welcomes 4th Costco outlet

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/09
By: Chiu Po-sheng, Huang Li-yun and Frances Huang

Taipei, April 9 (CNA) Costco, an American membership-only wholesale 2016040900061club, opened a new outlet in the Taipei suburb of Beitou on Saturday. Before its opening, shoppers were lining up for gifts, causing a traffic jam around the store.

The Beitou branch is the fourth Costco outlet in Taipei and New Taipei and the 12th in Taiwan after the large-size wholesale hypermarket operator made its inroads into the country for the first time in 1997.

W. Craig Jelinek, chief executive officer of Costco, attended the opening ceremony where a lion dance troupe performed — a very traditional Chinese way of wishing for good luck whenever a new business opens.

The Costco CEO distributed red envelopes to the troupe and posed for a group photo along with the head of the Beitou outlet Chang Wen-lei (張文蕾).2     [FULL  STORY]

DPP lawmakers re-propose draft bill on refugees

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 11, 2016
By: Chiu Yen-ling / Staff reporter

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers are re-proposing a draft bill on refugees.

Lawmakers tabled a draft bill on refugees in the previous legislative session, aiming to address international human rights, but it met opposition from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus that cost the bill a chance to be discussed and reviewed.

DPP legislators Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) and Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) have each proposed a version of the draft legislation on refugees, which have been referred for further deliberation in the Internal Administration Committee, and the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.

The Ministry of the Interior in 2005 put forward a draft refugee act, but it failed to secure passage in the legislature.

In the previous legislative session, which commenced in 2012, the Executive Yuan’s version of the draft legislation excluded Chinese and Tibetan refugees seeking asylum from the act. Hsiao and other DPP lawmakers tabled their own version, including such groups of political refugees, but it was not put to committee review.
In 2013, a version of the draft act was proposed by lawmakers across party     [FULL  STORY]

Founder of Chung Tai Chan Monastery passes away (update)

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-09
By: Lu Kang-chun, Jay Chen and Lilian Wu, Central News Agency

Taipei, April 9 (CNA) Wei Chueh, the Buddhist monk who founded Chung Tai Chan Monastery in the town of Puli in central Taiwan, has passed away, the monastery announced early Saturday. He was 88.

The grand master passed away at 10:31 p.m. Friday, the monastery said. His death was due to a regression of marrow regeneration, which resulted in complications.

The monastery was closed Saturday, shutting out buses carrying mainland Chinese tourists.

It plans to have a scripture reciting assembly from April 11-17 in remembrance of the grand master.

Born in Sichuan, China in 1928, Wei Chueh was one of the most important religious figures in Taiwan in recent decades, with more than 1,000 monk disciples and hundreds of thousands of followers in Taiwan and around the world.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwanese women the world’s 11th-longest visitors to PornHub in 2015

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/09
By: Emerson Lim and Y.F. Low

Manila, April 9 (CNA) In 2015, women from Taiwan on average spent 10 29582766minutes and 11 seconds per visit to PornHub, which offers free access to sex videos and pornography online, according to a report released by the pornographic website, which claims to be the largest of its kind in the world.

The “PornHub’s 2015 Year in Review” reveals that 24 percent of the website’s visitors were women last year, with each spending an average of 10 minutes and 33 seconds per visit.

The time spent per visit by Taiwanese women ranked the 11th longest worldwide, behind those from the Philippines, the United States, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands, the report says.     [FULL  STORY]

Erstwhile KMT rising star questioned over sex videos

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 10, 2016
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Lee Zheng-hao (李正皓), a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Youth League secretary-general, was on Friday questioned by prosecutors in Taipei over an allegation that he secretly filmed his sexual encounters with several women without their knowledge.

The litigation was filed by a woman and her male friend, surnamed Kuo (郭), who alleged that Lee frequented nightclubs, dated several women at the same time and secretly recorded sexual activities without informing the women.

Kuo posted messages on social media saying that he has records of Lee’s text messages to various women, who claimed they were victimized by Lee’s sexual proclivities.

Kuo also alleged that Lee had engaged in financial fraud during his stint as KMT Youth League secretary-general, accusing him of forging receipts to defraud the party by claiming expenses for the party’s youth programs.

Lee denied the allegations after being questioned by the prosecutors.     [FULL  STORY]

Legislature rejects labor holiday cuts

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-04-08
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Legislative Yuan on Friday rejected a 6746701government proposal which would have cut the number of holidays for laborers by seven per year, and demanded that the Cabinet revise or cancel the plan within two months.

A new Cabinet, headed by former Finance Minister Lin Chuan, is scheduled to take office on May 20, the same day Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen is scheduled to be sworn in as president.

Facing questioning by lawmakers last month, Labor Minister Chen Hsiung-wen insisted the seven free days had to be removed from texts related to the Labor Standards Act in conjunction with the introduction of the 40-hour week.

Labor groups protested, accusing the Kuomintang government of sacrificing the interests of workers to benefit employers, while Chen struck back at lawmakers saying they should sue him if they disagreed.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwanese artist’s ‘animal refugees’ attend climate conference

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/04/08
By: Elaine Hou

Taipei, April 8 (CNA) A group of “animal refugees” are in Sweden to “attend”

Photo courtesy of the Sigtuna Foundation

Photo courtesy of the Sigtuna Foundation

an ongoing climate conference by taking their place in the latest art installation by Taiwanese artist Vincent J.F. Huang (黃瑞芳) to highlight climate change.

More than 30 polar bears and penguins, which represent the first animal victims of global warming, are being displayed on a lake near the venue of a Climate Existence conference taking place from Wednesday to Friday in Sigtuna, not far from the capital Stockholm.

With Europe already mired in a human refugee crisis, the presence of animal refugees aims to raise awareness of the crisis facing them amid global climate change, said Huang, who is attending the conference.

“Polar bears and penguins, wearing life vests, arrived in waters near Stockholm on a chunk of floating ice, a metaphor that refugees not only come from wars,” Huang told CNA via email.     [FULL  STORY]

Report accuses Ma of misusing state funds

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 09, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is facing accusations that he has squandered state funds for personal use, including purchasing concert and movie tickets.

A report by the Chinese-language online news platform SETN.com late on Thursday said Ma has used more than 99 percent of the state affairs fund earmarked for his discretionary use over the past eight years, and that the money was not always spent properly.

For example, the report said Ma used NT$39.958 million (US$1.22 million at current exchange rates) of the NT$40 million state affairs funds allocated in 2012, while there were only about NT$20,000 and NT$30,000 left in the funds in 2013 and 2014 respectively.

Even in the last year of his presidential term, Ma has spent more than half of the NT$30 million allocated for the year in the first six months, the report said.     [FULL  STORY]

The perils of a long transition

Taiwan News
Editorial
Date: 2016-04-07
By: Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Deng Nan-jung, the editor-in-chief of a magazine called the “Freedom Era

Tsai attending the memorial service for Deng Nan-jung on Thursday. April 7, 1989.

Tsai attending the memorial service for Deng Nan-jung on Thursday.
April 7, 1989.

Weekly” set himself on fire in his Taipei office as police tried to arrest him. His crime? Sedition, or publishing a proposal for a constitution for the Republic of Taiwan in his magazine.

Just a few months later, students in China would face similar repression on a much bigger scale on Tiananmen Square, yet Taiwan had always prided itself on being a “Free China,” a lighthouse in the darkness of authoritarianism.

While Deng’s actions in the face of repression have been marked by sympathizers and supporters for many years, his significance has taken 27 years to be recognized on a wider scale.

President-elect Tsai Ing-wen said Thursday that as soon as her administration took office, the next April 7 would be earmarked as “Freedom of Expression Day” for the whole country. Of course, that will not be enough to safeguard basic freedoms. Legislative proposals in the works to prevent the monopolization of the media and to restrict the involvement of political parties in the media will be the more practical sides of the same thinking, pushing through reforms to anchor the changes already achieved and make sure the gains become permanent.     [FULL  STORY]