Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/03/31
By: Tang Pei-chun and Romulo Huang

Taipei, March 31 (CNA) Expatriates from Taiwan and traditional overseas Chinese

communities have so far promised to donate a total of US$2.4 million for the Feb. 6 earthquake victims in Tainan, southern Taiwan, the Cabinet-level Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) said Thursday.

As of March 31, the donations committed by different groups and individuals of expatriates from Taiwan and ethnic Chinese communities across the world totalled about US$2.4 million, of which some US$376,000 were promised by groups and individuals living in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the OCAC revealed.

Some of the committed donations received by the OCAC were transferred to the special accounts set up by the Tainan City government and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, respectively, for the relief work following the Feb. 6 earthquake, it added.

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit southern Taiwan on Feb. 6, leaving 117 persons killed and scores of buildings collapsed in Tainan.      [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: March 31, 2016

Taipei Metro celebrated its 20th anniversary March 28, continuing to impress riders with its

high standards of cleanliness, efficiency and globally recognized reliability.

From 2004 to 2008, the metro was No. 1 in the world for reliability as assessed by London-based benchmarking groups Community of Metros and Nova Group of Metros. According to operator Taipei Rapid Transit Corp., it no longer holds top spot but continues to rank among the leaders.

Congratulatory videos from city metros around the world flowed into the offices of TRTC. One of the most popular is a clip by New York City Transit Authority staffers wishing the metro happy birthday in Chinese.

This strong appreciation of the metro is shared by foreigners in Taiwan. Priority seats for the elderly, disabled and pregnant women; a ban on eating and drinking in stations and on trains; and standing on the right side of station escalators all come in for high praise.

Andrew Dyson, an English teacher from the U.S. working in Taipei, said the metro is safe, clean and convenient. “The no-food policy is good, for sure. So many times on the subway in New York I sit on seats covered in spilt pop and discarded fast food. I cannot begin to count the number of times I had to throw away designer jeans ruined by food and drink stains.”     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 01, 2016
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

Minister of Defense Kao Kuang-chi (高廣圻) yesterday said that tension has been rising in

the South China Sea amid an arms race among nations in the region, and that Taiwan’s armed forces are ready to defend its remote island outposts.

Due to a potential military threat against Taiwan’s islands in the South China Sea, Kao said programs have been underway to enhance radar installations and electronic surveillance in the region and to improve the combat capability of the nation’s coast guard units stationed on the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) and Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島).

According to a Ministry of National Defense report to the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, the ministry has mandated the Navy’s Marine Corps to train coast guard units on weapon handling, operating artillery guns and field combat drills, for those units deployed on Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) and other outposts in the South China Sea.

It said that in recent years, defensive firepower on these outposts has been enhanced with the installation of Bofors 40mm guns and Taiwan’s own T-63 120mm mortar systems, which receive regular repair and maintenance checks by artillery technicians.

When asked by Democratic Progressive Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) if the ministry has deployed anti-air missile defense systems on these islands, Kao said he was not at liberty to answer.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-03-30
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – President Ma Ying-jeou has turned down a request by Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey to resign following a scandal surrounding a biotechnology stock deal, the Presidential Office said Wednesday.

Wong’s daughter, painter Wong Yu-shioh, is being investigated for insider trading over the sale of shares in OBI Pharma, Inc. before the company announced the failure of test trials for a new cancer drug. Since the shares were reportedly donated by her parents, they are also facing allegations of tax evasion. The high-profile case has attracted accusations of improper behavior by the head of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s most prestigious academic organization.

The top academic phoned the president from the United States Tuesday evening to offer his resignation for health reasons, but Ma refused and asked Wong to return to Taiwan and explain the situation in order to safeguard the Academia’s reputation, said presidential spokesman Charles Chen. He apparently sent a fax with another resignation letter Wednesday morning.

The Legislative Yuan has reportedly scheduled a hearing of its Education and Culture Committee to hear Wong Thursday afternoon. However, the Chinese-language Apple Daily reported Wednesday that since he had already tendered his resignation, Wong felt he no longer needed to appear at the Legislature and had therefore asked a deputy to replace him.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/03/30
By: Wang Shu-fen and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, March 30 (CNA) Temperatures in Taiwan rose higher Wednesday and were expected

to hit a high of 29 degrees Celsius in southern Taiwan during the day, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said.

It warned, however, that big differences would remain between temperatures during the day and at night.

The weather will remain mostly sunny around Taiwan on Wednesday, similar to the day before, with sporadic showers seen in Hualien and Taitung counties in the eastern part of the country, CWB forecasters said.

Daytime highs on Wednesday were expected to reach 25 degrees in Yilan and Hualien, 26 degrees or higher in areas north of central Taiwan, and 27 to 29 degrees in the south, the CWB forecast.

Temperatures will drop to 16 to 18 degrees at night, the CWB said.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-03-29
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit system will arm all of its security guards with batons in the wake of several public safety incidents in the past few days.

On Monday, a 4-year-old girl was decapitated in the streets of Taipei City. One day later, an environmental worker was attacked with a saw on an intersection in New Taipei City and a police officer was injured in a knife attack at the capital’s Xinbeitou MRT station.

Even though no incidents happened in Kaohsiung, the city’s MRT system said Tuesday that within the near future, all of its guards would be equipped with batons. Until now, only guards patrolling at the busiest stations would be armed, reports said.

The decision was reportedly made just hours after the incident at the Taipei MRT station. With an increase in random violence, there was a need to improve public security, the Kaohsiung MRT reportedly said. The Xinbeitou attack also led to a higher state of awareness for all guards and MRT police officers in the Kaohsiung system.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: March 29, 2016

A startup by four Taiwan youths is making the greatest sound revolution in the past 80 years

on the back of its immersive sound technology recently launched in the U.S.

Los Angeles-based Ambidio has developed an algorithm that makes listeners think they are hearing surround sound as opposed to conventional stereo.

Iris Wu, the 29-year-old founder and chairwoman of Ambidio, said the secret to their technological success is using psychoacoustic principles and treating the brain as a decoder.

“We insert common cues into audio files that the brain uses to identify and perceive where different sounds within the stream would have come from to create the experience.”

Wu added that the algorithm can be easily used in laptops, tablets, smartphones and TVs by directly adding it into movie and audio files, or as a plug-in for processing sound in real time.     [FULL  STORY]