West Virginia Metro News
Date: March 18, 2018
By: Brad McElhinny in News

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Each year, the houses of West Virginia’s Legislature typically

pass a resolution honoring the state’s friendly trade relationship with Taiwan.

But it’s not every year that West Virginia also announces a trade relationship with China said to value $83 billion.

So this year’s Taiwan resolution sat on the backburner in the House of Delegates until the legislative session ended.

“It’s only an assumption on my part as a result of the $80 billion mystery memorandum of understanding that no one has seen yet,” said Delegate Rodney Miller, D-Boone, the main sponsor of the Taiwan resolution.    [FULL  STORY]

The meeting lasted one day longer than originally scheduled, due to the number of issues brought up

Taiwan News  
Date: 2018/03/18
By:  Central News Agency

TAIPEI (CNA)– The seventh meeting of a Taiwan-Japan fishing commission concluded

Sunday, one day after originally scheduled, due to the number of issues brought up, including a Taiwanese fishing boat that was chased off with water-cannon fire in disputed waters earlier in March.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the meeting for the most part reaffirmed an agreement that the two countries first entered into in April 2013, through which they agreed that both sides could fish within a 74,300-square- kilometer area around the disputed Diayutai Islands in the East China Sea.

The rules for fishing and fishing boats traveling through the designated area remain the same, except within a zone, shaped like an inverted triangle, north of the Yaeyama Islands, that is encompassed within the original agreement.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/03/18
By: Huang Ming-hsi and William Yen

Tokyo, March 18 (CNA) Taiwanese film “Take Me To the Moon” (帶我去月球) won the Asahi Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) Award with 1 million Japanese yen (US$9,438) in prize money at the 2018 Osaka Asian Film Festival (OAFF) Saturday.

The ABC Award is given to the most entertaining participating new film by ABC, a member of the OAFF Executive Committee, according to the OAFF website.

“Take Me To the Moon” is directed by Hsieh Chun-yi (謝駿毅) and stars Jasper Liu (劉以豪) and Vivian Sung (宋芸樺).

According to the 2018 OAFF website, the movie describes how the protagonist reunites with members of his high school rock band after many years at the funeral of their lead singer.

After the funeral, drunk, he gets hit by a car and becomes miraculously transported back to just a few days before his high school graduation in 1997, where his band is going to perform.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date:  Mar 19, 2018

Filmmaker Kevin Lee’s latest documentary, ‘Self-censorship,’ explores how China limits

freedom of expression in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In an interview with ‘Taipei Times’ staff reporter Huang Tai-lin, Lee likened making the documentary to starting a movement, which he hopes would make more people contemplate the meaning of democracy and understand that they need to do more than vote

Taipei Times (TT): What prompted you to shoot “Self-censorship” (并:控制) in the first place?

Kevin Lee (李惠仁): I got the idea for the film after I attended the Taipei Film Festival’s award ceremony on July 16, 2016. That month had been eventful in East Asia. Earlier that month, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, in a ruling invalidated Chinese claims in the South China Sea.

Unhappy with the ruling, Chinese netizens began circulating a map of China that included Taiwan, alongside a message that read: “China cannot be one bit less” (中國，一點都不能少). Taiwanese actress Ruby Lin’s (林心如) studio also reposted the map, which Lin later said reflected her personal stance as well.

Then, there was an incident involving [Taiwanese actor/director] Leon Dai (戴立忍), who was allegedly a supporter of Taiwanese independence. In response to demands that he clarify his political stance, he issued a 3,000-word statement saying that he did not support Taiwanese independence; nevertheless, he was replaced in a movie by the film’s Chinese production team.    [FULL  INTERVIEW]

Asia One
Date: 12 March 2018
By: AFP

Weekend event features music, food, movies and language

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/03/17
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – While most of the world is celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day

Saturday, Taipei City played host to Taiwan’s first-ever Spanish Language Day.

Most of the country’s remaining 20 official diplomatic allies are Spanish-speaking countries in Central and South America and in the Caribbean.

The weekend event in the capital features movies and documentaries, music and dancing, traditional food and language classes. A second day of activities on Sunday will center on the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, the Central News Agency reported.

The Spanish Language Day was the first event planned by a task force formed about six months ago to promote the study of the language in Taiwan, Spanish representative Jose Luis Echaniz Cobas said at the opening. The group was supported by the embassies of the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay, and by the representative offices of Spain, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), he said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/03/17
By: Chen Chih-chung and Kuan-lin Liu

Taipei, March 17 (CNA) The Guinness World Records, the international authority of

records set in human achievements and natural phenomenon, has officially recognized the nearly nine-hour rainbow observed from the Chinese Culture University (CCU) in Taipei City last year as the world’s longest-lasting rainbow.

Official Guinness World Records adjudicator John Garland presented a certificate to CCU on Saturday for meticulously documenting the rainbow.

According to the university’s data, the rainbow, which appeared on Nov. 30, lasted from 6:57 a.m. to 3.55 p.m., or just shy of nine hours.

It beat the previous record of a six-hour rainbow held by Wetherby, Yorkshire in the United Kingdom in 1994 by nearly three hours.    [FULL  STORY]

WELL-TIMED: Richard Armitage and other authors said in a paper the US should routinize its approval process for arms exports to Taiwan and not consult with Beijing

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 18, 2018
By: Nadia Tsao and Sherry Hsiao  /  Staff reporter in WASHINGTON, with staff writer

US President Donald Trump and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), as well as Cabinet-level officials from Taiwan and the US, should meet each other to discuss issues of mutual interest, former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage said in a paper published by US think tank Project 2049 on Friday.

In a paper titled US-Taiwan Relations in a Sea of Change: Navigating Toward a Brighter Future, coauthored with Ian Easton and Mark Stokes, Armitage made policy recommendations for US-Taiwan relations, one of which is that Trump and Tsai should have a face-to-face meeting.

Such a meeting should address issues of shared interest and concern, the paper said, adding that it would shatter practice since 1979, when the two nations severed official diplomatic ties.

It would also have far greater implications for the US, Taiwan and China than the telephone call between Tsai and Trump on Dec. 2, 2016, when Trump was still president-elect, the paper said.    [FULL  STORY]