The China Post
Date: September 18, 2017
By: The China Post

TAIPEI – Prosecutors formally charged the son and the lover of a woman who fell to

her death in April for conspiring with her to cash in on her insurance policies.
The Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office indicted the two as well as the sister of the lover for assisted suicide and attempt to commit fraud.

On April 24, a 44-year-old woman surnamed Yeh fell off Provincial Highway No. 7 at the 7.5-kilometer mark, tumbling off a steep slope to her death. According to her son and her lover, who were with her when the incident took place, she died taking a selfie.

Prosecutors, however, suspected foul play. They found that in the half year before Yeh’s deadly fall, she had purchased multiple accident insurance policies, with which her son, her lover and her lover’s sister claimed NT$34 million after her death.
[FULL  STORY]

BBC News, Taipei
Date: Sep 16, 2017
By: Cindy Sui

Footage apparently showing police and paramedics failing to give medical treatment

to a Vietnamese migrant worker, who had been fatally shot by a police officer, has prompted outrage in Taiwan.

Former factory worker Nguyen Quoc Phi, 27, was shot nine times in Hsinchu County near Taipei on 31 August, after the officer and a government worker responded to a reported car theft.

Dashcam video from the first ambulance shows a police officer telling paramedics not to approach Nguyen because he had not been restrained.

They stood by for several minutes not offering the man any help. The ambulance then took away the slightly injured government worker without attending to the severely wounded man lying on the ground.

Despite his injuries, the casualty was handcuffed. A second ambulance later arrived but Nguyen was pronounced dead when he arrived at hospital.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-09-17

More than 250 people gathered at Central Art Park in Taipei on Sunday to use their

bodies to spell out the English words “China! Free Li.”

The words were in response to China’s detention of Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che since March. Lee pleaded guilty last Monday to “subversion of state power”. The court in Hunan Province said that it will issue a verdict at a later date.

An NGO called Lee Ming-che Rescue Brigade says that Taiwanese people will not stop protesting his detention until he is released. The group said that protestors will continue to speak out in the international community, protesting China’s human rights abuses.    [SOURCE]

A young Taiwanese filmmaker documents life of Taiwanese migrants in Okinawa

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/09/17
By: Juvina Lai,Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Taiwanese filmmaker Huang Yin Yu has made a

documentary which illustrates the life of Taiwanese who migrated to Okinawa in the 1930s when Taiwan was governed by Japan, reported the Japanese news The Asahi Shimbun.

The movie is titled “Umi no Kanata” in Japanese and its English subtitle is “After Spring, the Tamaki Family”.

As the title suggests, the movie mainly focuses on a Taiwanese family of three generations in the island of Ishigakijima.

The director is now based in Okinawa where he is producing a series of documentaries about pre-war immigrants. He studied at a graduate school in Tokyo for two years, after which he started visiting Okinawa and came across several Taiwanese families who migrated before the World War II.

Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945 and in between this time around the 1930s several Taiwanese families moved to Okinawa and settled there, mostly migrating to the Ishgakijima island.    [FULL  STORY]

GHOST ROYALTY:The ‘most pressing’ human rights issue in Taiwan is housing, as only 0.08 percent live in public housing, compared with 5 percent in the rest of East Asia

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 18, 2017
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

A coalition of housing rights advocates yesterday rallied in front of the Democratic

Progressive Party (DPP) headquarters to call for hearings on controversial development and expropriation cases nationwide.

Dozens of advocates and people affected by land expropriation parodied a religious ceremony and burned paper offerings to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier William Lai (賴清德), Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊), Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦), who they said were “ghost kings and queens” responsible for inappropriate seizure of properties and the victimization of residents.

They called for administrative hearings to be held for a planned underground railroad line in Tainan, the Taoyuan Aerotropolis project, the relocation of residents in a former military dependents’ village at Daguan (大觀) community in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) and rezoning in the Wenzaizun (塭仔圳) area in the city’s Sinjhuang District (新莊).    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-09-16

Premier William Lai has called for cooperation with the government’s plan to phase

out nuclear power.

The Tsai Ing-wen administration has set a goal of mothballing all of Taiwan’s nuclear plants by 2025. The government also hopes that electricity from renewable sources will account for 20% of Taiwan’s power supply by 2025.

On Saturday, the premier visited the southern city of Tainan, where he had served as mayor before taking his current position. He spoke about his decision seven years ago to turn Tainan into a low-carbon city. He also spoke about the city’s work to pass ordinances lowering carbon emissions and encouraging the development of solar power.    [FULL  STORY]

Event takes place as UN gears up for General Assembly

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/09/16
By: Matthew Strong,Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – As the United Nations readied its annual General Assembly,

Environmental Protection Administration Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) arrived in New York to present Taiwan’s first report on its sustainable development aims.

His “Voluntary National Review” was designed to meet the “sustainable development goals” (SDGs) set up by the United Nations with 2030 as the target date, even though Taiwan is not a member.

Lee made his presentation at an international seminar where he also underlined the program’s multilateral dimensions. Taiwan’s sustainable development efforts involve assistance to other nations worldwide in several domains, including information technology, environment, agriculture, education and healthcare.   [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/09/16
By: Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, Sept. 16 (CNA) Passengers on flights departing from Taiwan will be able to

get a full refund starting Saturday if they opt not to take a flight that has been delayed by more than five hours, according to a revision to aviation rules by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.

It was the first time the ministry set a time frame for handling disputes over flight delays, with the new rule also applicable to inclement weather, said Han Chen-hua (韓振華), director of the Civil Aeronautics Administration’s (CAA) Air Transport Division.

“Passengers do not necessarily have to take the refund, but the new measure allows them to have another option,” Han said, adding that the revised rule follows the European Union’s aviation standard.    [FULL  STORY]