Nearly 75 years after the decisive Battle of Yenangyaung, fallen heroes of the ROC army are remembered

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/13
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A delegation of 50 Taiwanese officials and expatriates attended a memorial service on Saturday at a cemetery in Ramgarh district of the Indian state of Jharkhand to commemorate the sacrifices of 600 Republic of China (ROC) soldiers who fought in the victorious Battle of Yenangyaung in World War II.

In April 1942, nearly 75 years ago, ROC soldiers from the 113th Regiment fought their way through horrific heat and smoke from the burning oil wells of Yenangyaung in modern day Myanmar to rescue 7,000 British Indian soldiers of the 1st Burma Division, who had become completely surrounded by Japanese forces.

After three days of intense fighting, Chinese Nationalist forces lead by General Sun Li-jen (孫立人), nicknamed the “Rommel of the East,” managed to reach British forces, but at the cost of 600 out 800 combat personnel.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/13
By: Wen Kuei-hsiang and Y.F. Low

Taipei, March 13 (CNA) Deputy Justice Minister Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) on Monday urged China to resume cooperation with Taiwan on combating crime, based on an agreement signed between the two sides in 2009.

Chen was responding to a media report which said that because cross-Taiwan Strait relations have cooled since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office on May 20 last year, Chinese authorities no longer hand over to Taiwan Taiwanese telecommunication fraud suspects arrested overseas.

Chen admitted that this has been the case since last year.    [FULL  STORY]

PROPERTY RIGHTS:The son of the original landowner said the KMT acquired the plot of land in Taipei at no cost after his father refused to accept a court-enforced sale

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 14, 2017
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee is to reopen an investigation into the

Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) acquisition of the land housing the party’s National Development and Research Institute to determine if it involved any impropriety.

The committee is to hold a hearing in May and if the acquisition was found to have involved an abuse of government power, the KMT would have to return the illicit gains, committee spokeswoman Shih Chin-fang (施錦芳) said yesterday.

The institute sits on an 8,300 ping (2.74 hectare) plot of land in Taipei’s Muzha District (木柵), which the KMT acquired in 1964 during its one-party rule.

Yeh Sung-jen (葉頌仁), son of the original landowner, filed a complaint with the committee in October last year, accusing the KMT of illegally seizing the property.

Yeh accused the KMT of attempting to force his father to sell the land to it for NT$191,100 (US$6,178 at the current exchange rate), or about NT$5 per ping, well below the market value at the time, which was NT$200 per ping.
[FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: March 14, 2017
By: Stephanie Chao

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The Ministry of Justice said it may seek international assistance to

track down the perpetrator of a recent oil spill in the waters surrounding Taiwan’s offshore Green Island.

Deputy Justice Minister Chen Ming-tang (陳明堂) said that using GPS, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) had identified a suspicious foreign-registered vessel that may be behind the spill.

The vessel has already left Taiwan’s waters, though whether there are Taiwanese distributors or other parties involved is still being investigated by local environmental protection agencies, prosecution offices and the Taitung County Government, Chen said.

The Justice Ministry said that if the oil spill were categorized as an environmental crime or marine pollution criminal case, the Justice Ministry would seek to resolve the case through international collaboration in a method similar to how Taiwan had busted overseas fraud rings.    [FULL  STORY]

“If there are families in the U.S. or Canada willing to give one of our rescues a home, who are we to turn them away and not give that dog a better life?” said Liza Milne of Mary’s Doggies, a dog rescue organization in Taiwan.

The News Lens
Date: 2017/03/12
By: By Chieni McCullough, TaiwaneseCulture.org

Growing up in Taiwan in the 1980s, hardly anyone I knew kept dogs as pets. The only

people I knew with a dog were my grandparents who lived on a farm about 90 minutes south of Taipei. Kuro (Japanese for “black”) was basically a guard dog that roamed through the rice fields that surround my grandparents’ traditional U-shaped farmhouse. He spent his days sleeping outside, eating our leftovers, playing with us grandkids whenever we visited and lounging around while my grandfather worked the fields.

Back in Taipei city, the only dogs I encountered were stray dogs that sometimes chased me on my way to and from school. They would often be afflicted with terrible skin diseases and be maimed by scooters or other unfortunate accidents. Once in a while, I would see a nursing mom with puppies behind some bushes and I would feel the urge to take one home, but I was always stopped by my mom. “Dogs are dirty,” she would scold me.    [FULL  STORY]

South Korean trainer jets make refueling stop at Kaohsiung International Airport in Taiwan

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/13
By: Judy Lin, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Taipei (Taiwan News)—A squadron of advanced South Korean T-50 training planes and

C-130 military transport aircraft landed in Taiwan’s southern city Kaohsiung for refueling last Saturday.

The squadron is comprised of six T-50 training planes and two military transport aircraft C-130.

Three of the training planes departed Taiwan on Sunday afternoon, while the remaining planes will leave the country on March 13, 2017, said Deputy Director of Kaohsiung International Airport Yi-chung Sun (孫翼中).

Aviation fan Chao Chien-po (趙千博) told Apple Daily reporters, South Korea’s air force has been refueling the 13-meter long planes in Taiwan before departing for aviation shows held in Singapore and Langkawi in Malaysia over the last three years.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/12
By: Chen Ting-wei and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, March 12 (CNA) A dead duck, found at a public park in Taipei last week, has

been confirmed as infected with the H5 subtype strain of avian influenza virus, according to the Council of Agriculture (COA), which urged people not to feed or touch wild birds.

However, the test results did not indicate which N subtype strain of the virus killed the duck, which was found in Green Lake Park, Neihu District on March 8, due to several factors including the low level of virus volume, the council said.

Following the finding, Taipei City government mobilized 53 personnel on Sunday to clean bird droppings from 18 parks close to Green Lake Park and sterilize the areas.
[FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 13, 2017
By: Chiu Yan-ling and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer

A portrait of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) that went missing from the Legislative Yuan

during the Sunflower movement protests is now in the possession of 228 Memorial Museum Director Iap Phok-bun (葉博文).
Students involved in the Sunflower movement had denied knowledge of the painting’s whereabouts after it was found to be missing, Iap said in an interview yesterday.

The painting was found crumpled up in a ball in a plastic bag in the Legislative Yuan, and the person who found it asked him if he wanted it, Iap said.

However, he did not say when it was found.

places, he said.

It appeared to have been sliced with a utility knife, while the damage to its surface likely occurred when it was crumpled up.

Iap found an artist to iron out the painting and reframe it, and he has since stored it in his home.

Some people who have seen the repaired painting at his home have told him that it is dark and gloomy, while Chiang’s face appears ghost-like, he said.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: March 13, 2017
By: Kuan-lin Liu

Workers of all ages have their work cut out for them in Taiwan, where chronic overwork

and stagnant wage growth have squeezed employees for decades.

Millennials have found themselves facing additional challenges, as new technology and the changing economy shift the skillsets sought after by the market.

Last year, 57 percent of Taiwanese businesses hired entry-level employees — a 19 percent drop from the previous year’s 76 percent. Job Bank 1111 Deputy General Manager Lee Da-hua (李大華) attributed the decline to the poor economy in 2016, saying that small and midsized companies had generally turned away fresh graduates with little professional experience.

Given that nearly all businesses in the country are either small- or medium-sized corporations — 97.67 percent — this puts millennials between a rock and a hard place when looking to enter the workforce.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-03-11

The Atomic Energy Council (AEC) expects a review of plans to decommission the

Chinshan Nuclear Power Plant in June will be completed in June. The AEC made the announcement Saturday.

The plan’s approval would mark another step towards the government’s goal of eliminating nuclear power in Taiwan by 2025.

The AEC also said it expects state-owned power company Taipower to submit similar plans for Taiwan’s two other active nuclear plants by the end of 2018 and in mid-2021.

The AEC has also outlined its expectations for progress on the issue of storing nuclear waste.

It says it expects Taipower to have a concentrated nuclear waste storage facility ready for use within eight years. The storage site is expected to resolve the issue of storing waste from decommissioned plants. And the same time, it will allow the government to clear the controversial waste storage site on Orchid Island.    [FULL  STORY]