Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/07/30
By: Chen Chih-chung and S.C. Chang

Taipei, July 30 (CNA) Students blaming a fellow student’s alleged suicide on the Ministry of Education (MOE) moved their protest late Thursday to the Legislative Yuan and demanded that lawmakers act to abolish the controversial high school curriculum guidelines.

The long-simmering protest intensified after Lin Kuan-hua (林冠華), a former spokesman for the protest movement on the issue, was found dead earlier in the day in what was believed to be a suicide.

Lin’s death triggered calls for Education Minister Wu Se-hwa to step down, and protesting students and supporters continued their protest outside the MOE compound, wishing Wu “a good night’s sleep.”

By 10:15 p.m., some of the protesters had mounted the walls of nearby Legislative Yuan compound and displayed banners calling for Wu’s resignation and legislative action to do away with the MOE revisions of history curriculum guidelines.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 31, 2015
By: Wu Po-husan  /  Staff reporter

As the nation reels from the news that student activist Dai Lin (林冠華) has taken his own life,

an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) showed the pressure he was under due to his participation in protests against the government’s planned changes to high-school student curriculum guidelines.

Lin was one of 33 people arrested on Thursday night last week for entering the Ministry of Education building and was facing possible prosecution along with 23 other activists.

During a telephone interview on Sunday — two days after his release on bail — Lin said that the principal of New Taipei City’s Juang Jing Vocational High School had visited him hours earlier to discuss his involvement in the demonstration.     [FULL  STORY]

IP office says the name Soap Picker would be ‘detrimental to good morals’
Soap Picker’s logo incorporates a buttocks in its design.

Photo via Facebook
Gay Star News
Date: 29 July 2015
By: Darren Wee

A handmade soap company in Taiwan had its trademark application denied because its name ‘refers to gay sex’ and would be ‘detrimental to good morals.’

The owner of Soap Picker Studios, Miss Chiang, posted a letter from the Intellectual Property Office on Facebook that said the term ‘pick up the soap’ referred to ‘gay men’s sexual behavior.’

The letter, dated 28 July, goes to say that the name would give an ‘unpleasant impression’ and therefore it could not be registered under regulations on trademarks ‘detrimental to public order or good morals.’

Jiang has already appealed the decision.

‘Strange, since you are a girl, if gay men want  got to do with you!’ she wrote on Facebook, referring to a Miss Kuo at the IP office.

Soap Picker’s logo designer, Kris Chu, criticized the IP office’s action as ‘not only arrogant, but also discriminatory.’

He admitted that the logo incorporates a human buttocks in its design, but said businesses had the right to choose what logo to use.

He said the intellectual property department could only advise businesses to reconsider, not deny registration.

Taiwan News
Date: 2015-07-29
By Jocylin FC, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Two students who protested against altered curricula by travelling around Taiwan on foot

touched the heart of a 72 years old lady.

Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung said the municipal city recently received a letter from a grandmother whose last name is Chen. In the letter, the grandmother stated her admiration for the students, and she wishes the mayor can pass on NT30, 000 in the package to the students.

Grandmother Chen said on the letter that she is now 72 years old. She heard from the news that 2 youngsters spend 25 days to walk throughout the nation to voice their opposition towards the altered curricula. Chen is touched by their determination. She wanted to help them out but she cannot ride scooters or drive a car. The only thing she knows is the students will arrive at Taichung municipal government building.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/07/29
By: Liu Chien-pang and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, July 29 (CNA) Taipei City decided Wednesday to deploy an additional 124 security

officers in its mass rapid transit network, following a random knife attack in the subway system on July 20.

The decision to increase the city’s MRT security patrol from 166 to 290 guards was made after 27-year-old Kuo Yen-chun (郭彥君) wounded four people with a knife at the system’s Zhongshan Station in central Taipei around 9 p.m. on July 20.

The Taipei Rapid Transit Police Brigade had filed an application with the city government since last year to deploy more security guards in the subway system after a 21-year-old college student killed four passengers and injured 24 others in a knife-wielding rampage on a moving MRT train on May 21, 2014.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-07-29
By: CNA

Taiwan is still negotiating with Indonesia and the Philippines on their “unilateral” decisions

made earlier this month to raise wages for domestic helpers in Taiwan, the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.

“We will bring the issue up at a meeting in Taipei in early August, which will be attended by labor officials from Taiwan and the Philippines,” said Bob Chen, deputy director-general of the ministry’s Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, at a news briefing.

Taiwan will also continue to discuss the issue with Indonesia through existing communication channels, he said.

Since Indonesia and the Philippines announced the pay increases in July, the foreign ministry has said the issue needs to be handled through bilateral negotiations. The Indonesian and Philippine governments made their announcements without first consulting with Taiwan, Chen said.     [FULL  STORY]

Indonesia and the Philippines informed Taiwan earlier this month that they had decided to increase the monthly wage for their domestic helpers in Taiwan from the current NT$15,840 (US$502.60) to NT$17,500 (US$555.27).

COMMITTEE DEFENDED:Higher Education Division official Lee Hui-min said a review process was rigorous and conducted in accordance with proper regulations

Taipei Times
Date:  Jul 30, 2015
By: Abraham Gerber  /  Staff reporter

Students yesterday protested the approval of university tuition hikes by the Ministry of

Education.

Protestors from the Alliance Against the Commercialization of Education gathered in front of the ministry’s building in Taipei and demanded that the ministry reverse approval of tuition hikes of up to 2.5 percent for nine universities, questioning the rigor of the review process.

“The Ministry of Education told us that it would conduct a strict review, but there are no indications this promise was adhered to when looking at the results,” protester Lee Su-chun (李蘇峻) said, citing profits of up to NT$250 million (US$7.9 million) earned by many of the universities involved.

Lee said the ministry rejected requests to provide the minutes from the review committee meeting, as well as the names of committee members and the selection process they went through.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/07/28
By: Rita Cheng, Tang Pei-chun and Frances Huang

Washington, July 27 (CNA) Taiwan was placed under Tier 1 for the sixth consecutive year in the annual Trafficking in Persons report released by the U.S. Department of State on Monday, indicating that Taiwan continues to make an effort to address the problem.

Along with Taiwan, the United States, Canada and Germany were also listed as Tier 1 countries, meaning that they met the minimal standards set by the U.S.’s Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) for the elimination of human trafficking, according to the report.

Countries listed as Tier 1, the highest ranking in the report, have acknowledged the existence of human trafficking and made efforts to address the problem, but it does not mean they do not have a human trafficking problem or that they are doing enough to address the problem, the report said.

In Taiwan’s case, the report said most of Taiwan’s human trafficking problems largely resulted from the existence of migrant workers.     [FULL  STORY]