Taiwan News
Date: 2016-01-03
By: Ko Lin, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

The Taipei City government has scrapped the aptly-named “Meet the Mayor”

Taipei scraps ‘Meet the Mayor’ channel.

communication channel beginning this year, a periodic event with which Ko would hold face-to-face dialogues with selected members of the public at the City Hall, reports said Sunday.

The program was first introduced by then-mayor Chen Shui-bian to provide Taipei residents a more convenient, intimate way to file for government assistance and services related to public works, social order, and as such.

“It has been scrapped for now,” Ko said, adding that the nation’s ‘1999 Citizen Hotline’ will remain effective in lure of the face-to-face public dialogue.

The 1999 hotline is the round-the-clock toll-free (except when calling from a pay phone or using a pre-paid cell phone) number in Taipei and several other cities and counties around Taiwan.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/01/03
By: Chen Wei-ting, Evelyn Kao and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Jan. 3 (CNA) Snow has finally fallen in Taiwan for the first time this winter, the latest the first snow has arrived in the country in eight years, the Central Weather Bureau said Sunday, after revising an earlier statement.

Snow was discovered by weather station personnel on Yushan, the tallest peak in Taiwan at 3,952 meters, at around 5 a.m.

Taiwan’s first snowfall normally comes in December, and the bureau initially made it a point to say the first snow of this winter season on Sunday morning was the latest since the winter of 2000, when flakes first appeared on Jan. 10, 2001.

It later realized that it failed to take into account the first snow on Jan. 17, 2008 after misjudging snowfall on Dec. 24, 2007 as the first snow that year.

Under the official definition, the first snow must be accumulated snowfall of at least 0.1 centimeters, a standard that the Dec. 24, 2007 snowfall did not meet.

Sunday’s snowfall was somewhat of a surprise because overnight temperatures on Yushan never fell below zero.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-01-02
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – During Saturday’s final presidential election debate,

Tsai calls for thorough reform.

Democratic Progressive Party Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen called for a resolution of the illegal party assets issue and for the publication of confidential files from Taiwan’s history.

Tsai is widely tipped to win the January 16 presidential and legislative elections. In the debate, she tackled Kuomintang Chairman Eric Liluan Chu and People First Party Chairman James Soong.

One of the recurrent topics in Saturday’s debate was the topic of the KMT’s assets, an issue which has been around for decades but which Tsai said she would finally solve if elected president.

She named the assets as a problem for the true and thorough democratization of Taiwanese politics and as the target of one of five reform plans she was planning to push through if she was sworn in next May 20.     [FULL  STORY]

NEGLECTED ISSUE?The protesters called for the presidential candidates not to ignore the suffering of the public over the issue of forced relocations

Taipei Times
Date:  Jan 03, 2016
By: Hsiao Ting-fang, Aaron Tu and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporters, with staff writer

A contingent of 227 police officers was deployed by the Taipei City Police

Members of the Democratic Alliance perform a skit outside the Taipei venue for the second debate between the presidential candidates yesterday, accusing the candidates of kowtowing to big business. Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times

Department’s Neihu Precinct yesterday to keep the peace near the Sanlih Television building in Taipei where the second and final presidential debate was held.

At about noon, various protest groups started setting up their banners, staging skits and chanting slogans.

Among the protesters were dozens of landowners from Taipei’s Wufenpu (五分埔) garment district demanding that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) produce a solution regarding eight families that were unlisted when the city government relocated residents in 1955 to enlarge roads.

There were also representatives of families from New Taipei City’s Sinjhuang District (新莊) who were forced to relocate to make way for an MRT maintenance depot, who demanded that the presidential candidates address the issue of housing relocation.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-01-01
By: Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Starting January 1, food products containing GM food ingredients or additives

Rule tightened over GM food labeling takes effect.

are required to be labeled as GM products if such ingredients account for three percent or above of the product ingredients.The new regulation has changed the minimum GM content from 5 percent to 3 percent.

The New Taipei City government has stepped up food inspection as a new and stricter regulation on genetically modified (GM) food labeling took effect Friday.

In November, New Taipei’s Public Health Department began random checks of 140 food producers in the city and has since inspected 287 food items.

It found three items that contained GM ingredients but were not labeled in line with the regulations. It also examined 55 cases of soya products such as bean curd and soy milk and found that four of them contained more than 3 percent GM ingredients.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/01/01
By: Yu Kai-hsiang and Kuo Chung-han

Taipei, Jan. 1 (CNA) Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) approval rating was at

Ko Wen-je (second left)

69.3 percent in December, down 6.3 percentage points from August, Taipei’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission said on Friday based on a recent poll.

The commission’s survey, conducted roughly one year after Ko took office on Dec. 25, 2014, also found 19.8 percent of respondents dissatisfied with the mayor’s performance.

The approval rating remains above Ko’s own expectation of a 65 percent satisfaction rate, said Huang Ming-tsai (黃銘材), acting head of the commission.

On specific policies, 78.9 percent of respondents were satisfied with Taipei’s safety and security situation, and 58.8 percent were satisfied with traffic and transportation conditions, but only 36 percent were satisfied with elementary to high school education in the city, the poll found.

The poll had 1,007 respondents and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.09 percentage points.