Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/28
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)–Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau on Tuesday released a 15-minute micro film promoting the Penghu archipelago as an ideal destination for traveling light all year round.

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/28
By: Scarlett Chai and Y.F. Low

Taipei, March 28 (CNA) The government’s “youth ambassadors” program will focus on Southeast Asian and South Asian countries this year, in line with Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said Tuesday.

This year, 75 college and university students will be selected to the International Youth Ambassadors Exchange Program, under which they will embark on 10-day tours in separate groups to India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam in late August, according to Shen Wen-chiang (沈文強), deputy director-general of MOFA’s Department of NGO International Affairs.

Shen said the tours will cover four main themes: exchange and study, volunteer service, courtesy visits, and cultural diplomacy.    [FULL  STORY]

WHISTLE-BLOWER RULES:Party legislators presented a draft bill aimed at making it easier to report malpractice by bolstering rules against disclosure of personal data

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 29, 2017
By: Sean Lin / Staff reporter

The New Power Party (NPP) yesterday said it would seek to have former vice president

Lien Chan’s (連戰) family turn in assets that his father, Lien Chen-tung (連震東), allegedly took from the government after Japan renounced its control over Taiwan after World War II.

The NPP in this legislative session is to submit a change to the transitional justice bill it proposed last year, which would remove draft provisions targeting assets illegally obtained by political parties, NPP Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) told a news conference in Taipei.

The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee is already probing the assets, while the new provisions would mandate that former civil servants or other people return improperly obtained assets the Japanese colonial era administration left with the government, Lim said.

The most notable of these is the Taipei Jen Chi Hospital, a philanthropic facility formerly run by the Japanese colonial government.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: March 28, 2017
By: Sun Hsin Hsuan

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Ministry of Education pulled a U-turn Monday, retracting a

previously announced policy that would have included all nontenured professors under the umbrella of the Labor Standards Act.

Education Minister Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said at the Legislature’s Education and Culture Committee that the inclusion should be “reconsidered.”

Amending the regulations governing the employment of nontenured professors would perhaps be a more pragmatic approach that would create fewer problems, Pan said.

“Even if they really apply to the Labor Standards Act, some exemptions must be made,” Pan said, noting that the act not only fails to protect the rights of these professors, but also is not comprehensive enough in terms of safeguarding students’ education rights or campus safety.    [FULL  STORY]

Use this map of cherry blossom locations to get your last glimpse of the pink flowers before it’s too late

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/27
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Photographer Josh Ellis has created a Google map that shows

66 locations where cherry blossoms or in Japanese “Sakura” can be found in Taiwan.

On his website goteamjosh, Ellis posted a Google map which includes the geographic location and the name in English and Chinese where Sakura cherry blossoms can be found in various locations around Taiwan. The map includes violet-colored flowers, which symbolize locations where cherry blossoms can be seen and include a brief description of the locale, and yellow hearts, which mark his favorite cherry blossom viewing locations.

There are a number of varieties of cherry blossoms that can be seen in Taiwan at different periods during the spring, including Taiwan cherry (山櫻花), Showa cherry (昭和櫻), Yae-Zakura (double-layer) cherry (八重櫻), Yoshino cherry (吉野櫻), and Fuji cherry (寒櫻).    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/27
By: Charles Kang and S.C. Chang

New Delhi, March 27 (CNA) Nepalese police have informed local stations and travel

guides to help search a missing Taiwanese young couple who have gone missing in the Himalayas since March 3, a Nepalese police officer told CNA Monday.

Liang Sheng-yue (梁聖岳), 21, and his girl friend Liu Chen-chun (劉宸君), a freshman of National Dong Hwa University, arrived in Nepal in February, hiking in Tamang on Feb. 22. They last contacted their families in Taiwan on March 3. They were to call Taiwan again on March 10 but did not do so. Family members requested official help to find them on March 15.

The officer at Nepal Police Headquarters said helicopters have also been dispatched to look for the Taiwanese whereabouts from the sky, to no avail as of Monday.

On Sunday, a deputy chief of Nepal Police met with the family members of the missing young Taiwanese accompanied by Taiwanese officials based in India, the officer said.

With consent from the family members, Nepalese police have hired three guides to search for Liang and Liu on possible routes leading to Langtang Village where the two were supposed to meet up with their Taiwanese friends, according to the officer.
[FULL  STORY]

‘POLITICAL SLOGAN’:The Sports Administration should stand strong in the face of international requirements that are unreasonable, DPP Legislator Huang Kuo-shu said

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 28, 2017
By: Lu Yi-hsuan, Shelley Shan and William Hetherington / Staff reporters, with staff writer

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday criticized the Chinese Taipei

Football Association (CTFA) for removing a banner reading “All hail Formosa” raised on Sunday by fans during a qualifying match with Turkmenistan.

DPP Legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書) criticized the banner’s removal, saying the Sports Administration should do a better job of advising the CTFA, adding that fans should not be censored when they are cheering for their team.

Huang, at a joint news conference in Taipei with DPP Legislator Chang Liang Wan-chien (張廖萬堅), also said that two volleyball players were unable to participate in the Asian Youth Championship in Chongqing, China, earlier this month, because Taiwan’s Volleyball Association failed to inform the players about changes to the qualification rules that have been in place for two years.

The volleyball association was ordered to explain the incident within a week, Sports Administration international and cross-straits division director Hsu Hsiu-ling (許秀玲) said.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: March 28, 2017
By: Sun Hsin Hsuan

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Ministry of Education pulled a U-turn Monday, retracting a

previously announced policy that would have included all nontenured professors under the umbrella of the Labor Standards Act.

Education Minister Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said at the Legislature’s Education and Culture Committee that the inclusion should be “reconsidered.”

Amending the regulations governing the employment of nontenured professors would perhaps be a more pragmatic approach that would create fewer problems, Pan said.

“Even if they really apply to the Labor Standards Act, some exemptions must be made,” Pan said, noting that the act not only fails to protect the rights of these professors, but also is not comprehensive enough in terms of safeguarding students’ education rights or campus safety.    [FULL  STORY]

Los Angelese Times
March 2 6, 2017
By: Ralph Jennings

Wang Hao thrived during her semester as an exchange student in Taiwan. As a native

of mainland China, she found it exotic to hang out with Taiwanese students, sitting under a thicket of banyan trees and listening to local bands.

Now a fourth-year undergraduate at Dalian University of Technology, Wang wants more people from the mainland to see Ming Chuan University, where she studied in Taipei. So she supports the Chinese government’s insistence that Taiwanese schools issue pro-Beijing statements to ensure that they can be trusted politically.

Taiwan and China have been at odds for seven decades and Beijing has never dropped the threat of military force. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen contests Beijing’s idea that her island and China belong under one flag. Her refusal to honor the “one China” concept irritates the communist leadership and stopped earlier dialogue between the two sides.    [FULL  STORY]