Taiwan Today
Date: August 30, 2016

Taiwan was named the best place in the world to live for expatriates, standing out for the quality and

affordability of its health care and enviable financial situation of expats living there, according to the 2016 InterNations Expat Insider Survey.

“Taiwan is our big winner. It’s the best place for quality of life as well as for personal finances,” Malte Zeeck, founder of InterNations, the world’s largest network for people living abroad, said during an interview with Forbes Aug. 29. “They are doing something very right there.”

The survey covers a wide range of topics and focuses on participants’ happiness regarding a variety of factors related to their countries of residence and personal lives abroad. More than 14,000 respondents representing 174 nationalities took part and answered questions involving issues such as ease of settling in, family life, personal finances, quality of life and working abroad.

Taiwan replaced two-time champion Ecuador to rank at the top of this year’s survey. In addition to claiming first place out of 67 countries in the overall ranking, it is in the top 10 for every individual index.

The results also show Taiwan scored second place in the Working Abroad Index. Around 34 percent of expats in Taiwan are completely satisfied with their jobs, which is more than double the global average of 16 percent. Thirty percent of those surveyed said they are similarly enthusiastic about their work-life balance, with 34 percent reporting the same level of satisfaction regarding job security.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
DateL 2016-08-30
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Kaohsiung City Government needed to pay NT$910,000 (US$28,700) in compensation to two residents for the damage they suffered during the 2014 gas explosion, the Kaohsiung District Court ruled Tuesday.

The blast on July 31, 2014 killed 32 and injured 321 people, but the vast majority of victims or their relatives chose not to file action against the city government. Only 11 did so, and Tuesday’s verdict concerned two of them.

The blast was reportedly caused by a buildup of propene inside a pipeline under an urban area which had not been checked for two decades. When irregularities were found at the scene, it took the companies hours to shut down the pipeline, with the blasts occurring shortly after, close to midnight.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/30
By: Liu Jian-bang and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Aug. 30 (CNA) The urban bike rental system, YouBike, has updated its official app so that users can now be sure if they have returned bikes properly and paid the required fees, Taipei’s Department of Transportation (DOT) said Tuesday.

The new function was developed based on statistics showing that most calls to the YouBike customer service hotline were to check to see if users had successfully returned their bike or if payment of the rental fee with their EasyCard had gone through, the Taipei DOT said.

To get access to these new functions, users only have to download the YouBike App, enter their membership account number and sign up for the notification function.

The function will automatically notify them within three minutes every time they return a bike to a station. It will also notify users of emergency situations or general information on public bike operations, the DOT said.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: August 31, 2016
By: Angela Chu

For book worms, our passion for reading began the moment we set eyes on picture books. From

poring over illustrations and listening to adults read us stories to reading them on our own, it was through these pictures books that we caught our first glimpse of the outside world, learning eagerly about it. Recognizing such significance in children’s books, the Hans Christian Andersen Award was initiated in 1956 and has become the highest honor in children’s literature.

‘The Nobel Prize for Children’s Literature’

After WWII, it became evident to many that children’s books were a means of promoting mutual understanding and peace on an international level. Under UNESCO’s International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY, 國際兒童圖書評議會), the biennial award was originally given to authors of children’s books. In 1966, it was extended to illustrators.

Celebrating five decades, the works of all past winning-illustrators are being compiled for the very first time in the Hans Christian Andersen Awards 50th Anniversary Exhibition (國際安徒生插畫大獎50周年展) in Taipei. Despite not being a member of the IBBY and thus being unable to participate in award nominations, the driving force behind the exhibition is interest and appreciation for children’s literature in Taiwan, said Exhibition Manger Hsinyi Hu (胡忻儀) of the Blue Dragon Art Company (蔚龍藝術有限公司), which curated the exhibition.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: August 30, 2016
By: Sun Hsin Hsuan

TAIPEI, Taiwan — V Air employees on Monday staged a second protest only 10 days after the first,

demanding that the Taipei City government step up its actions against what they called unlawful mass layoffs at a local budget airline.

In a shocking announcement last week, TransAsia Airways, the parent company of V Air, decided to shut down its subsidiary for a year and to discharge more than 240 employees.

The announcement came only days after TransAsia said it would suspend all but two V Air flights starting Oct. 1 and that the employees would work under the parent company.

Employees of the budget airline first took collective action last Wednesday — staging a protest and filing a petition to the local government — after learning that a layoff proposal had been “secretly” filed to the Taipei City government.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: August 29, 2016

Four memorandums of understanding spanning offshore wind power, aviation precision machinery,

commercialization of innovations and semiconductors were inked during a recent 15-day, six-state Taiwan industrial cooperation mission to the U.S., according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs Aug. 28.

The first was finalized by the MOEA’s Taiwan-USA Industrial Cooperation Promotion Office, China Steel Corp. of Kaohsiung City in southern Taiwan, CR Classification Society and Taiwan Wind Turbine Industry Association with three U.S. companies: ABSG Consulting Inc., Keystone Engineering Inc. and Principle Power Inc.

“Concluding a memorandum with U.S. partners possessing advanced capabilities in the certification of offshore wind farm projects, as well as building fixed and floating foundations for offshore wind turbines, will strengthen bilateral cooperation in related technologies and help promote the development of Taiwan’s green energy industry,” said mission leader Wu Ming-ji, director-general of the MOEA’s Industrial Development Bureau.

The second was signed by state-backed nonprofit Industrial Technology Research Institute of Hsinchu County in northern Taiwan and Deta International Co. Ltd. of Taichung City in central Taiwan, a leading manufacturer of automatic tool changers, with Boston-based Energid Technologies Corp. The U.S. outfit is a top provider of advanced software and robotic systems for the aerospace, defense, medical and transportation industries.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-08-29
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

A three-day food safety summit will kick off on Tuesday in Taipei and will be attended by food safety

experts from Taiwan and around the world. Before the summit, European Food Safety Authority Executive Director Bernhard Url and FoodWatch’s Campaign Director Matthias Wolfschmidt visited I-Mei’s Nankang Plant Monday to see what the so-called “Taiwan’s role model in food safety” has been doing to survive the food safety scandals which hit other companies in the country over the past few years and how they have eased consumers’ peace of mind.

Accompanied by the Taipei-based European Economic and Trade Office Deputy Head of Office, Viktoria Lovenberg, Bernhard Url and Matthias Wolfschmidt visited I-Mei Foods Co. ahead of the summit and were received by the company’s CEO Luis Ko. The team visited I-Mei’s Food Safety Lab and had a wide-ranging discussion and exchange of views ranging from food safety laboratory management, practice, to opportunities for lab collaboration.

I-Mei Foods managed to survive the food safety scandals thanks to its ownership of a food testing laboratory. As a result, the government in 2014 added a so-called “I-Mei clause” to the Act Governing Food Sanitation, demanding that about 70 food companies set up labs of their own in order to take more responsibility in preventing problematic food products from reaching the consumer.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/08/29
By: Claudia Liu and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, Aug. 29 (CNA) Public satisfaction with the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has fallen considerably since she assumed office on May 20, indicating that her honeymoon period is coming to an end, a pollster said Monday.

The satisfaction rate for the Tsai government has fallen by 17.6 percentage points to 52.3 percent in August from 69.9 percent three months ago, according to the results of a survey released Monday.

You Ying-lung (游盈隆), chairman of the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation that conducted the survey, said Tsai’s approval rating fell to 55.9 percent in the second month after her inauguration, and further dropped to 52.3 percent in the third month.

The percentage of those not satisfied with Tsai’s performance has increased by 24.4 percentage points to 33.2 percent since May, You said at a press conference held to present the survey’s results.     [FULL  STORY]