New Taipei’s trash bag price was lowered to NT$0.36 per liter, the same as that of Taipei

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/05/05
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taipei and New Taipei began to accept each other’s designated trash bags on May 1, 2019, Taipei’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said on April 29.

Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-yi (侯友宜) reached a consensus on the issue of trash collection in bot cities at a meeting on March 11. Both agreed that New Taipei’s trash bag price would be lowered to NT$0.36 per liter, the same as that of Taipei, on May 1, and that designated trash bags or reusable shopping-turned-trash bags from each other’s city will be interchangeably accepted.

The policy became effective in both cities on May 1.

The DEP stated that residents of both cities can purchase designated trash bags or reusable shopping-turned-trash bags at convenience stores, supermarkets, or hypermarkets in either city wherever they find convenient.  [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/05/05
By: Shine Chen and William Yen

Taipei, May 5 (CNA) Chinese nationals are very interested in the lifestyle of people in

Taiwan, according to a popular Chinese microblogger on the Sina Weibo platform, who received a huge number of comments and questions after a trip to the island.

Yan Jingsheng, a microblogger who has over 8 million fans on Sina Weibo, shared his findings Saturday at the ninth anniversary celebrations of the Beijing office of the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association (TSTA), which handles tourism-related affairs.

After posting photos and information about his seven-day trip to Taiwan with nine other popular Sina Weibo microbloggers in September last year, Yan started to receive questions about life on the island from his fans in China.

One example, included a photo he took of an empty carriage on Taipei’s metro system, which sparked a much heated discussion online.    [FULL  STORY]

TAKE ACTION NOW: Taiwanese, and billions of other people, could become climate refugees, the students said, urging everyone to reduce their carbon footprint

Taipei Times
Date: May 06, 2019
By: Lee I-chia  /  Staff reporter

Environmental groups yesterday urged students nationwide to join the Global Climate

Strike For Future on May 24 to demand concrete action from adults and the government on climate change.

The groups were accompanied by more than a dozen junior-high school and university students at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.

Taiwan Healthy Air Action Alliance convener Yeh Guang-peng (葉光芃) said that Swedish teenage climate advocate Greta Thunberg in August last year initiated the “school strike for climate” outside the Swedish Parliament, adding that the movement spread around the world, leading to a global youth climate strike on March 15.

The strike was followed by a series of climate change protests in London last month, and British lawmakers last week declared an “environment and climate emergency,” making the UK the first country to do so, he said.    [FULL  STORY]

Accidentally swallowed AirPod amazingly works after passing through man’s digestive system

Fox News
Date: May 4, 2019
By James Rogers

A man in Taiwan who accidentally swallowed an Apple AirPod got a big surprise after it passed through his digestive system, the Daily Mail reports.

Ben Hsu reportedly fell asleep with both AirPods in his ears, but could only find one when he woke up. A tracking feature on his iPhone indicated that he had swallowed the wireless earbud.

An X-ray revealed that the AirPod was indeed in his stomach, although Hsu was not experiencing any pain. Doctors gave him a laxative and he passed the earphone the following day in a railway station toilet.

Hsu found the missing AirPod after a gross search. After washing and drying the device he was stunned to discover that it still worked. Indeed, the AirPod’s battery was still at 41 percent, according to the Daily Mail.

Apple launched its AirPods in 2016 and the product has been a great success for the tech giant. The Cupertino, Calif.-based firm recently unveiled the second generation of the technology. The new “Hey Siri” AirPods that can be activated hands-free. Apple also now offers a wireless charging case for the devices.    [FULL  STORY]

‘SELF-DEIFICATION’?‘ If we don’t use it, will it affect our evaluations, or our chances for a promotion?’ a teacher said about the city’s request to use the mayor’s likeness

Taipei Times
Date: May 05, 2019
By: Huang Liang-chieh and William Hetherington  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Kaohsiung’s public institutions are not required to use an emblem bearing the likeness of

Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) on printed materials, the Kaohsiung City Government said yesterday.

The city government was responding after public schools on Friday received a notice from the city government saying that the emblem should be used whenever referencing the mayor in event materials, but officials later in the day backtracked, saying that they simply hoped that institutions referencing the mayor would use the emblem for uniformity.

Civil servants said they were “startled” by the notice, and criticized Han for what they called “self-deification.”

Some city agencies asked whether performance evaluations would suffer if they failed to use the emblem.

While the city was “not enforcing its use,” institutions using the emblem could do so without charge, the city’s Bureau of Information said.    [FULL  STORY]

Ministry of Education hosts school chef competition, with the aim of making vegetables more appealing and to reduce waste

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/05/04
By: Iris Hsu, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — To cut down food waste the Ministry of Education is teaming up with the Full Foods Foundation (灃食公益飲食文化教育基金會) to host a school chef cooking competition and “make school lunches more delicious.”

The “Full Foods Super School Chef Competition” challenges school chefs to make unpopular vegetables more appealing to school children. The unpopular vegetables include bitter melon, eggplant, Chinese yam, kale, green pepper, garlic, celery, onion, carrot, and peas.

According to Liberty Times, Taipei city schools produce two to three metric tons (2,000-3,000 kg) of food waste per day, on average. Taoyuan City and Tainan City both report nearly 50,000 kg of food waste each month. In Kaohsiung, 5 percent of school lunches become waste every month.

To curb waste, the competition aims to make school lunches more appetizing, in addition to being more nutritious and balanced.    [FULL  STORY]

SCOOP?A NextTV anchor said the station only filmed the helicopter’s departure and landing, and did not reveal the location where the bear cub was released

Taipei Times
Date: May 04, 2019
By: Lin Chia-nan  /  Staff reporter

The Ministry of the Interior and NextTV (壹電視) have drawn flak from conservationists

after the TV station broadcast exclusive footage of a Formosan black bear cub’s release into the wild.

The cub was found in July last year wandering alone near the Nanan Waterfall (南安瀑布) in Hualien County’s Jhuosi Township (卓溪). It was about three to four months old at the time.

The Forestry Bureau commissioned the Taiwan Black Bear Conservation Association to treat and train the cub before releasing it back into the wild.

The association posted regular updates about the cub’s growth, which attracted many followers online.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International 
Date: 03 May, 2019
By: Paula Chao

About 1,000 whiskered terns have descended unexpectedly on the eastern county of Taitung over the past two days, giving bird-watchers a rare treat.

The whiskered tern is a migratory bird that usually visits southern Taiwan in autumn and winter. However, nearly 1,000 of them were found hovering in the sky over Taitung over the past two days.

They arrived over the eastern county in droves, flying overhead or looking for food on riverbeds. Their large numbers serve as an advantage, allowing them to ward off natural predators while training juvenile birds at the same time.

Bird watcher Hsu Chen says the birds are flying towards Taiwan’s hinterlands due to bad weather. In general, they can also be seen in the coastal regions of Chiayi County and Tainan City on the west coast.     [FULL  STORY]

Once tradition bound, this year’s KMT primary is a blockbuster tale of drama and political intrigue.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/05/03
By: Courtney Donovan Smith (1石東文)

Television news in Taiwan is awash in breathless reports of drama, surprise, intrigue and enough twists and turns involving a cast of colorful character that makes TV political dramas seem tame. And this is just the Kuomintang (KMT) presidential primary – the actual presidential race has yet to begin.

Traditionally, KMT primaries were largely a forgone conclusion. The real action was the race to become party chair, who it was then assumed would be the de facto candidate for the party. This model was disrupted for a few months in 2015 when then-party chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) declined to run in the primary, eventually handing the nomination to Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), a firebrand deemed too pro-China for the public to handle at the time. The party eventually pulled the rug out from under their increasingly unpopular nominee and shoved a very reluctant Chu into the candidacy, restoring the tradition of the chair and the candidate being one in the same. Chu – a somewhat ungainly, but disarmingly charming man and very popular New Taipei City mayor who married into a powerful family – was very smart to be reluctant. The tide was very strongly against the KMT, and both his campaign and the party were crushed in a landslide.

In 2017, the demoralized KMT held a contest for party chair to determine who would lead the party into the November 2018 local elections, and possibly the January 2020 national elections a year-and-a-half later. They chose party stalwart and ex-Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) from a crowded field, winning with over 52 percent of the vote. Wu, though a local Taiwanese, is a protege and associate of ex-President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and the powerful party “mainlander” elites who mostly descend from the exiled KMT leadership from China that arrived in 1949. He’s stiff and wooden in public, but he’s a solid and reliable party man.    [FULL  STORY]