A handy guide to all the Michelin rated dining establishments in Taipei.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/03/16
By: David Green

Michelin, the French maker of tires that also operates one of the world’s most respected

restaurant rating systems, released its first guide addressing the gastronomic scene in Taipei this week (March 14).

The list of the final selection of one-to-three star restaurants, 20 in all, came hot on the heels of the release of 36 choices, including 10 selections from the capital’s famous night markets, in Michelin’s Bib Gourmand category, which covers quality food for less than 36 euros (US$44).

Taipei this year joined Tokyo, Hong kong/Macau, Singapore, and Shanghai among the Asian cities featured in Michelin’s guides, as the dining guide expands its presence in Asia. A Bangkok guide is also in the works.

So without further ado, here is the list of all 56 restaurants, from Le Palais -–Taipei’s only establishment to win the coveted three star award — all the way though to some of the city’s best street food.    [FULL  STORY]

 

Kaohsiung man arrested for taking used water bottles, filling them with tap water and selling them as ‘Danfeng’ mineral water

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/03/16
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Kaohsiung Prosecutors Office is charging a man on multiple

counts for selling bogus bottled water over the course of 10 years, reported Liberty Times.

On March 13, Kaohsiung authorities announced that they had raided the home of a 51-year-old man surnamed Lee (李), who had gone through a female accomplice surnamed Chen (陳) to collect discarded “Danfeng Water” (丹楓之水) bottles and then fill them with public tap water inside his apartment. He would then take the fake “mineral water” and sell it hotels and barbecue restaurants in the Kaohsiung Area.

After an investigation, authorities discovered that Lee had been operating the sham water business for 10 years and had made NT$3.36 million (US$115,000) in illegal profits. Lee and Chen were charged with theft, fraud, trademark infringement and violation of the food hygiene law, among other crimes, and the two were released on NT$50,000 and NT$20,000 bail respectively.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/03/16
By: Shih Hsiu-chuan 

Taipei, March 16 (CNA) Taiwan’s Cabinet on Friday announced “eight major strategies” to counter China’s latest attempt to attract Taiwanese people to study, work and invest in the mainland through 31 incentives.

Along with the measures, the government also announced it has formed a permanent task force under the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) to monitor and assess subsequent developments related to China’s incentives.

Speaking to reporters, Taiwan’s Vice Premier Shih Jun-ji (施俊吉) accused China of proposing the measures to lure Taiwanese investments, cutting-edge talent and new college or doctoral graduates to help it achieve its economic development goals and to bring Taiwan into its political fold.

“We take this very seriously. With the eight major strategies, Taiwan would go from strength to strength and withstand the purported magnetic effects (from China),” Shih said.    [FULL  STORY]

BRAIN DRAIN? While the migration of talent and industry is not an unusual trend amid globalization, the government should not let its guard down, academics said

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 17, 2018
By: Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

Academics yesterday called for calm amid concern that Beijing’s 31 incentives for

Taiwanese could trigger a brain drain and industrial migration, saying the trend is global.

They made the remarks at a forum organized by the Friends of Hong Kong and Macau Association in Taipei yesterday morning, just hours before the Executive Yuan put forward eight countermeasures against the incentives designed to draw Taiwanese talent and corporations to China.

The association is the only civic group focused on Hong Kong and Macau affairs and exchanges, and has been deemed as blue-leaning.

However, on Sunday, it elected Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the Democratic Progressive Party as its new chairman.    [FULL  STORY]

Efforts to counter noise pollution suffer from subjectivity problems and have not attracted the same level of public support as efforts to counter PM2.5.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/03/15
By: Jennifer Hsieh

In the past couple of years, PM2.5, or atmospheric particulate matter, has become a

popular buzzword for environmental activism in Taiwan. This was illustrated in Prof. Ming-sho Ho’s earlier contribution to Taiwan Insight, which includes an infographic that shows how Google searches for PM2.5 dramatically sky-rocketed after the 2015 release of a Chinese documentary “Under the Dome” on air pollution. Drawing upon the concept of social construction, Ho explains how the act of defining a problem produces the conditions and criteria through which an object becomes recognized as a problem in the first place.

A similar analysis can be made about noise pollution in Taiwan. Over the past 10 years, noise has consistently been ranked as the number one environmental complaint, reaching record numbers each year – that is until 2015 when complaints about unusual smells in the air began to surpass noise. And just as Ho points out that air pollution became a concern even after a steady decline in the Pollution Standards Index, the number of noise complaints started to grow in 2001 while the rate of decibel measurements found to be in violation of noise standards decreased, nearing zero percent.    [FULL  STORY]

The late president still features on one banknote and on coins

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/03/15
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – If the new transitional justice legislation requires it, symbols of

authoritarian rule such as effigies of President Chiang Kai-shek could be removed from the country’s banknotes and coins, new Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said Thursday.

The government is preparing to form a Transitional Justice Committee, with one of its tasks taking a closer look at remnants of the Martial Law era, in particular the presence of Chiang statues on school campuses and on government land.

If the law demanded that such symbols were also removed from currency, then the Central Bank would of course respect the law, Yang told lawmakers during a question-and-answer session Thursday morning.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/03/15
By: Chu Tse-wei and Kuan-lin Liu

Taipei, March 15 (CNA) U.S. science magazine Discover has ranked the case of a Taiwanese scientist and his research team who found protein in a 195 million-year-old dinosaur fossil as its number 12 top story of 2017.

The discovery was first published by Nature Communications, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and Discover’s website, on Jan. 31, 2017.

The story describes how an international team of scientists led by Lee Yao-chang (李耀昌) of Taiwan’s National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center used a new method to find the protein collagen in a fossil that is more than 100 million years older than previous preserved protein findings.    [FULL  STORY]

FACEBOOK POST: The president identified three areas for improvement, including being more sympathetic to victims of gender inequality and education for judges

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 16, 2018
By: Su Yung-yao  /  Staff reporter

Taiwan still has a long way to go to realize gender equality, and the nation needs to work

on gender mainstreaming in the judiciary, improve workplace equality and ensure social justice is realized through the judicial system, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday.

“A recent case at the Court of the Judiciary has sparked widespread discussion in the nation. As the president, I should not and will not comment on the case, but the controversies surrounding it made me very aware that Taiwan still has a long way to go in realizing gender equality,” Tsai said on Facebook yesterday afternoon.

Tsai identified three areas of improvement for the nation.

First, society should be more sympathetic to working women, she said.    [FULL  STORY]

City has no formal extradition treaty with the island, and experts are uncertain if an unprecedented legal arrangement can be reached to send student, 19, to Taipei after the decomposed body of his girlfriend was found there

South China Morning Post 
Date: 14 March, 2018
By: Clifford Lo, Chris Lau

The arrest of a former college student in Hong Kong over the murder of his girlfriend in

Taiwan may prompt an unprecedented legal arrangement to transfer the suspect in the absence of any formal extradition agreement between the two places, the Post has learned.

A source familiar with the matter said a provisional bill would have to be legislated locally, but legal experts expressed scepticism at the possibility. Critics pointed out that if this could be done, other fugitives, including tycoon Joseph Lau Luen-hung, convicted in a bribery trial in Macau, would not be a free man in Hong Kong.

The uncertainty over the case began on Tuesday when it emerged that a 19-year-old former associate degree student, surnamed Chan, was suspected of killing his girlfriend, Poon Hiu-wing, 20, while on a Taiwan trip in February. Chan returned to Hong Kong alone.
[FULL  STORY]