Google reshoots images for more than 150 indoor and outdoor sites 

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/04/25
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Google Taiwan has renewed images for more than 150 indoor and outdoor sites, and some of the images were taken by Google’s street view backpack. The refreshed scenes include different locations along the coast, and high mountains along the Alishan Forest Railway, where Google first captured images by installing a street view camera backpack on a train in the country.

The renew will allow users to surf at home and get to know the best places to travel in the country.

Google Asia-Pacific Street View program manager Cynthia Wei (魏薌君) said that the team is happy to reshoot the country’s popular attractions and even add more as the Google Street View program is celebrating its 10th anniversary in Taiwan, and it will help global users get the updated travel information.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/04/25
By: Emmanuelle Tzeng and Elizabeth Hsu

Paris, April 25 (CNA) Taiwan has the best press freedom in Asia, with its ranking in the

World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) moving up three notches to 42nd place in 2018, higher than any other Asian countries evaluated.

RSF published the annual global rankings Wednesday after measuring the level of media freedom in 180 nations and areas based on a set of criteria that includes the level of pluralism, media independence, the environment and self-censorship, the legal framework, transparency, and the quality of the infrastructure that supports the production of news and information.

In the 2018 index, the Asia-Pacific region continued to have the world’s worst violators of the freedom to inform, with North Korea at 180th and China at 176th in terms of democracy.    [FULL  STORY]

ACCUSED: The Chinese are helping Kuan Chung-ming conceal many of his dealings due to the parlous state of cross-state relations, DPP Legislator Rosalia Wu said

Taipei Times
Date: Apr 26, 2018
By: Wu Po-hsuan, Chung Li-hua and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporters, with staff writer

The Ministry of Education will have a definitive solution by tomorrow regarding the

eligibility of National Taiwan University president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) to assume the position, Minister of Education Wu Maw-kuen (吳茂昆) told the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday.

Kuan was on Jan. 5 elected the university’s president and was to assume the post on Feb. 1, but the ministry deferred ratification of his appointment, citing three points of contention: It was alleged that Kuan withheld information from the committee that he was an independent member of Taiwan Mobile’s board of directors; there were doubts about the fairness of the election committee’s procedures; and there were questions about the legality of a teaching position Kuan held at China’s Xiamen University while he was a government-contracted professor.

The controversy led to the resignation of former minister of education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠), who cited politically motivated attacks on the ministry.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau should work with influencers over agencies.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/04/24
By: Stephanie ZY Hsu

The Taiwan Tourism Bureau’s (TTB) most recent scandal began, as so many modern implosions do, with Twitter beef. Kathy Cheng, who runs Taipei-centric blog Tricky Taipei, wrote a post about her run-in with the enigmatic, spellcheck-deprived forces behind the horrendous @TripToTaiwan account.

The Twitter account is officially linked to the TTB; marking a new low in the bureau’s history of amateur, incoherent and disjointed promotional initiatives. The posts championing Taiwanese “wishky” and “dirty chocolate bread” were quickly scrubbed from the @TripToTaiwan account, but not before the story was shared by a variety of outlets: Apple Daily, network television (TTV), and even the Facebook pages of media personalities.

Though I had not previously known about the existence of the @TripToTaiwan Twitter, the TTB’s complicity in its cringe-worthy content hardly surprised me. In February of this year, I had two meetings with the TTB, including a lengthy sit-down with the International Affairs Division Director Cheng Ying-huei (鄭瑛惠), and its Section Chief, Joseph Cheng (國際組).
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/04/24
By: Joseph Yeh

Taipei, April 24 (CNA) This year’s Han Kuang military exercises, Taiwan’s largest scale annual drill, will feature Coast Guard officers and civilian Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operators for the first time to make use of all levers of national power in military planning.

The series of exercises will begin with computer-aided war games from April 30 to May 4 before live-fire drills are staged across the country from June 4 to 8, Major General Ye Gou-huei (葉國輝) of the Ministry of National Defense (MND) announced at a briefing Tuesday.

Ye said that during the live-fire part of the drill, the ministry will combine civilian forces and other government branches for the first time to take advantage of all resources available in case of enemy invasions.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwanese forensic scientist Henry Lee fears the large amount of ammunition could lead to a conviction in Sun’s case

Taiwan News 
Date:  2018/04/24
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) —  An Tso “Edward” Sun (孫安佐),  Taiwanese exchange student

arrested in March for allegedly threatening to “shoot up” a private school in Pennsylvania, may have a tough time avoiding jail time as his court hearing looms, according to a legal expert, reported EBC.

As Sun’s court hearing is set for tomorrow (April 25), forensic scientist Henry Lee (李昌鈺), who is an idol of Sun, said that he may be able to have the charges related to the verbal threats dropped. However, he said the amount of ammunition, 1,600 rounds of various types, was too large, and if it becomes a special case, it could be a problem.

Lee said that it is possible that the judge could be convinced that when Sun told a classmate that he was going to “shoot up” their school, he was only joking, as his celebrity mother Di Ying (狄鶯) had claimed when he was first charged in March. Lee said this could help him beat the charge of terrorist threats and could help with the rest of the case.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-04-23

Cloud Gate Dance Theater, Taiwan’s most famous dance group, celebrates its 45th

anniversary this year. The troupe has just finished a 40-day tour of North America and departed again on Sunday for a 50-day tour of Europe.

Cloud Gate was the first contemporary dance company in the Chinese-speaking community. Its innovative and often mesmerizing performances combine modern dance with elements of traditional Chinese culture. The troupe was founded by Lin Hwai-min and has been acclaimed as the leading dance theater company in Asia.

The first stop on the European tour is Wolfsburg, Germany. Then the troupe travels to Paris, London, Lisbon and other major cities. They will perform their two works Formosa and Rice in Germany, Austria, Italy, England, France, Portugal and other countries. Formosa is Lin’s newest work from 2017 and the title means “about the island” in Chinese. It is a reflective portrait of modern Taiwanese society with its diverse culture and sentiment.    [FULL  STORY]

62% of the respondents reported workplace bullying and 46% complained about sexual harassment 

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/04/23
By: Huang Tzu-ti, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – As many as 60.2 percent of salary employees in Taiwan worry

about health issues stemming from overwork, while 75.3 percent of them have considered quitting jobs because of exhaustion at work, according to the latest survey released by Yes123 job bank on April 23.

Yang Tsung-pin, spokesman for Yes123, estimated that a staggering 5.41 million out of the island’s 8.985 million salary workers could be suffering from overwork.

The research finds that a female worker under excessive stress has experienced abnormal menstrual cycles and even developed auditory hallucinations involving mistakenly hearing phone ringing, probably because she’s anxious not to miss a call at work.

In addition, 62 percent of the respondents said they have been bullied in the workplace, while 46 percent complained about sexual harassment at work.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/04/23
By: By Chang Ming-hsun, Chen Wei-ting and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, April 23 (CNA) Measles cases have hit a nine-year high in Taiwan, but a measles

epidemic is unlikely because a high percentage of the population has been vaccinated against the disease, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said Monday.

Chou said the CDC has been on alert because the number of patients with measles in Taiwan is at its highest level in nine years.

But asked to comment on the potential for a large measles outbreak, Chou said Taiwan has a measles vaccination rate of 97 percent, higher than about 90 percent in many other countries, making an epidemic unlikely.

As of Saturday, 22 people had tested positive for the highly contagious virus since March 29 when the CDC reported Taiwan’s first imported case of measles infection this year — a male patient who was infected with measles during a trip to Thailand in early March.    [FULL  STORY]