Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/06/13
By: Chiang Pei-ling and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, June 13 (CNA) Eight companies from Taiwan are participating in the 2018

Annecy International Animation Film Festival (AIAFF), which opened Tuesday in Annecy, France.

It is the fourth time that the Ministry of Culture’s Department of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development is leading the effort to highlight Taiwan’s animation industry at the festival.

The Taiwanese animation films entered in the festival include “Baryon,” “Yameme and the Five Colored Stones” and “On Happiness Road,” according to a statement issued Wednesday by an animation company responsible for promoting exchanges during the event.

“On Happiness Road,” which won the top prize at the 2018 Tokyo Anime Award Festival in March, has been selected for screening in the out-of-competition feature film category, the statement said.

The movie was directed by Taiwanese journalist and photographer Sung Hsin-yin (宋欣穎).    [FULL  STORY]

RECRUITMENT OBSTACLE: KMT caucus whip Lin Te-fu said that the planned pension system has discouraged people from pursuing employment in the public sector

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 14, 2018
By: Ann Maxon  /  Staff reporter

Veterans’ group 800 Heroes and other organizations opposed to pension reform

yesterday applied to the Council of Grand Justices for a constitutional interpretation on the legality of planned pension cuts for public-school teachers and civil servants following a rally in front of the Judicial Yuan in Taipei.

Under the new pension system, which is scheduled to take effect next month, civil servants and public-school teachers would have to work longer and their pensions would be calculated based on a lower income replacement ratio.

A preferential 18 percent interest rate on their savings would also be reduced to zero by Jan. 1, 2021.

About 300 pensioners and a dozen Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers rallied outside the Judicial Yuan to oppose the pension cuts.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-06-12

A Taipei university on Tuesday held its 25th annual robot challenge contest for

engineering students.

The scene was a lot less combative than the robot wars you may have seen on television. These robots are not fighting it out to the death with axes and chainsaws. But the ingenuity involved is not less complex. At National Taiwan University of Science and Technology on Tuesday, students from the mechanical engineering department took part in an annual robotics competition now in its 25th year.

The robots, designed by teams of students from scratch, must pick up ping pong balls and carry them over an obstacle course before depositing different colored balls in different buckets. The exercise tests not only the students’ design capabilities but also their abilities as operators, with a deft hand needed to navigate the obstacles en route.    [FULL  STORY]

NPR
Date: June 12, 20182:48 PM ET
By: Colin Dwyer

The same day that President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un held their

historic summit in Singapore, several U.S. politicians and officials attended another, far less heralded ceremony just to the north on Tuesday: It was the dedication of a ritzy new complex for the American Institute in Taiwan, or AIT — and China wasn’t happy about it.

That’s because, despite the innocuous name, the organization has long functioned as the de facto U.S. Embassy in Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing considers a renegade Chinese province. Since the U.S. established diplomatic ties with China nearly four decades ago, Washington has acknowledged that claim and cut ties with Taiwan — formally, at least.

Yet the U.S. and Taiwan have maintained a robust informal relationship. And on Tuesday, the representative office that has handled many of those informal affairs got a roughly $256 million upgraded compound in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei.    [FULL  STORY]

‘Lots of young people in Taiwan have to work overtime to be able to earn NT$27,000 a month.’

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/06/12
By: Huang Tzu-ti, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A video posted by a foreign YouTuber in Taiwan about the low

average starting salary of local university graduates has resonated with a great number of netizens and garnered 200,000 views in just a week.

Tu Chia (圖佳), a Turkish YouTuber with the account “Best Of Taiwan – 圖佳,” posted a video on June 4 featuring interviews with expatriates in Taiwan on questions about the starting salary for college graduates in their respective countries, and whether they consider the monthly wage of NT$27,000 (US$899) is sufficient for Taiwanese youths to live in Taipei.

Most of those interviewed, spanning nationalities of Japan, South Korea, Australia, Hong Kong, France, and the U.S., agreed that the amount of NT$27,000 is not enough for youths in their homeland countries to survive due to their relatively high living standards.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/06/12
By: Joseph Yeh

Taipei, June 12 (CNA) The new American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) office in Neihu is a

symbol of the strength of bilateral ties between the United States and Taiwan, a visiting U.S. assistant secretary of state said Tuesday at a dedication ceremony for the new facility.

Marie Royce, assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, declared that the 14,934-square-meter five-story complex represents much more than steel, glass and concrete.

“The new office complex is a symbol of the strength and vibrancy of the U.S.-Taiwan partnership in the 21st century,” she said.

Royce said she was on her first overseas mission since assuming her post in March to celebrate this “extraordinary friendship.”    [FULL  STORY]

Quartz
Date: June 11,, 2018
By: Josh Horwitz

While the world watches the summit between president Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un unfold, another significant event will take place elsewhere in Asia.

On June 12 in Taipei, Taiwan and the US will jointly mark the establishment of a new facility for the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the US’s de facto embassy in the country. Politicians from both nations are attending a ceremony to commemorate the $250 million complex, which will open formally later this year.

The event underscores the deepening ties between the current US administration and Taiwan, as China attempts to cut off Taiwan’s diplomatic reach. And even though its concurrent timing with the Trump-Kim summit is coincidental, observers are still watching it to gauge how the US might stand up to China’s claims on the island.
[FULL  STORY]