BBC News
Date: 06/30/2018
By Cindy Sui, BBC News, Taipei

In recent months, many multinational companies, from airlines to clothing brands, have been getting on the wrong side of Beijing.

They have done so by listing Taiwan under the title “country” in their website’s drop down menus, or by suggesting the island is a country on their product packaging, or designs.

China’s government and the Chinese people consider Taiwan – which has been ruled separately since 1895 when Japan occupied it as a colony and then by the Nationalists after the end of China’s civil war in 1949 – as an errant province, to be reunified one day.

Our Taipei correspondent Cindy Sui, who spent her early childhood in mainland China but grew up in the US, and has been living in Taiwan in recent years, sheds some light on why multinational companies and others now find themselves caught in the divisive issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-06-29

President Tsai Ing-wen attended a graduation ceremony at the ROC Army Academy

on Friday and said defense reforms in the last two years have borne results. The ROC or Republic of China is Taiwan’s official name.

Tsai acknowledged the military’s performance, especially in developing Taiwan’s own military hardware. She also encouraged the new graduates to keep working hard to prepare for more complex threats in the future.

Tsai also reiterated the results of defense reform during her two years in office.

“[The military] is working hard on the upgrading barracks. The new barracks will provide an unprecedented level of comfort and will also provide ample space for study. We are also pushing our cadets to develop secondary skills by providing training in different skills and languages. This will allow them to have a specialty to fall back on [when they return to] civilian life,” said Tsai.     [FULL  STORY]

In response to a record 14 murders last month, MOWES holds its first women’s self-defense class in Taipei

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/06/29
By: Sofia Kuan, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — In response to the recent string of gruesome murders,

MOWES (Moving Women Establishment), a community space advocating for female empowerment located in Taipei’s Da’an District, had their first self-defense class for women on June 27.

Founder and co-founder of the space, Maja Ho(侯梅婷) and Kai Hsieh (謝鎧安), organized these sessions as a response to the 14 female homicides in the past month involving violent encounters with men.

“These incidents were shocking, I didn’t expect them to happen — especially in Taiwan” said self-defense teacher and Tae-Kwon Do instructor, Russell Stuart. He conducted the first class starting by teaching the women how to detect warning signs and different release techniques to get away from aggressive wrist grabs and posterior grabs.    [FULL  STORY]

‘DOING THINGS BACKWARDS’: The caucus whip said that he suspected some parties had made huge profits and questioned the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ tender process

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 30, 2018
By: Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday brought legal charges against

Minister of Economic Affairs Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津), accusing the ministry of agreeing to purchase wind power from seven local and foreign firms at a greatly inflated price, which would result in taxpayers losing NT$900 billion (US$29.5 billion).

The ministry, in a first round of tenders, awarded the bid to the seven companies at NT$5.8 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), but in the second round, which began about two months later, accepted offers from other companies to supply wind power at less than half that price — NT$2.5 per kWh, KMT caucus whip Lin Te-fu (林德福) told a news conference.

Lin said he suspected that some parties have raked in an exorbitant profit and called on prosecutors and investigators to investigate the contracting process.
[FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News  
Date: 2018/06/28
By: Taiwan Today,Agencies

A memorandum of understanding on providing scholarships for Taiwan students taking doctoral programs in South Korea was inked June 26 in Taipei City by the Ministry of Education and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

Under the pact, which forms part of government efforts to foster expanded education exchanges with leading tertiary institutions around the world, a maximum three applicants per year will receive full stipends and tuition for four years of study at Daejeon city-based KAIST—one of the best schools of its kind in the Northeast Asian country.

Commencing in the fall semester of 2019, the initiative is the first joint-scholarship program entered into by the MOE with a top university in Asia, and the 14th worldwide involving 100 top global institutions.

Other participating schools include Australian National University; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne; Cambridge University and Oxford University; and California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, University of California, Berkeley, and Washington University.    [SOURCE]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/06/28
By: Ku Chuan and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, June 28 (CNA) The number of enrollments in Taiwan’s tertiary institutions by

Southeast Asian students in academic year 2017-2018 was more than 41,000, higher than the government’s target of 40,300, Acting Minister of Education Yao Leeh-ter (姚立德) said Thursday.

At a press briefing on the effectiveness of a government program to foster talent under its New Southbound Policy (NSP), Yao said students from Southeast Asian countries accounted for 35 percent of the tertiary enrollments by foreign students in Taiwan in the current academic year.

He said the program is aimed at helping schools in Taiwan and the NSP target countries to work together to cultivate talent and promote professional exchanges.

As part of the program, the government had set a goal of attracting at least 40,300 students from the target countries in the 2017-2018 academic year but has surpassed that target by more than 700, Yao said, adding that the new target for the next academic year is 58,000.    [FULL  STORY]