Taiwan News
Date: 2016-05-18
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) announced Wednesday that train tickets for this year’s four-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday will start selling online and via telephone from midnight May 25 (Wednesday).

The TRA also said that it will increase a total of 204 trains for the period from June 8 to June 13, including 147 trains for the Eastern Line and South-Link Line and 57 trains for the Western Line.

Discounted train tickets for this period include 30 percent off for tickets on June 8 from Shulin to Hualien (train code 5272) and from Shulin to Taitung (5270), and on June 11 from Taitung to Shulin (5271) and from Hualien to Shulin (5269 night train); and 10 percent off for tickets on June 8 from Hualien to Qidu (5221) and from Qidu to Taitung (5252).

As holiday tickets are selling fast, passengers are recommended to book as early as possible.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
2016/05/18 17:06:23
By: Kuo Chu-chen and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, May 18 (CNA) The skipper of a fishing boat from Pingtung County, which returned recently from waters close to the Japanese- held atoll of Okinotori in the Pacific Ocean, expressed hope Wednesday that the government will protect Taiwanese fishing boats’ rights to fish on the high seas.

Hung Kun-yung (洪崑勇) of the Chin Ching Fa fishing vessel, registered in Liuqiu Township of Pingtung County, southern Taiwan, also said that the government should firmly uphold its decision to protect Taiwanese fishing boats wherever they are, and send more patrol ships to the high seas where Taiwanese fishing boats are operating, to protect them.

Hung’s boat returned to Pingtung May 16 after concluding fishing operations in a disputed sea area close to the Okinotori atoll.

On April 25, the Tung Sheng Chi No. 16, also from Liuqiu, was seized by the Japanese coast guard while operating in waters some 150 nautical miles from the atoll. The boat captain was strip-searched.     [FULL  STORY]

‘HORSE-BRAIN JELLYFISH’:Ma Ying-jeou was said to be excited when volunteer workers at the Presidential Office proposed making the sarcastic Facebook video

Taipei Times
Date: May 19, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) won unusual praise from netizens yesterday after he uploaded

a sarcastic and self-deprecating video on Facebook in which he responded to his nicknames and ridiculed his own comments over the past eight years.

In a nearly four-minute video posted on Facebook yesterday morning, two days before he leaves office, Ma took a humorous approach to some of the most well-known nicknames given to him by netizens during his two presidential terms, such as “horse-brain jellyfish” (馬腦水母), “death-grip handshake” (死亡之握) and “deer antlers” (鹿茸).

“More than five years have passed since the creation of my Facebook fan page in January 2011, during which time the page has been ‘liked’ by about 1.67 million people,” Ma said in the video.

Ma said whenever he has the time, he personally checks the comments on his Facebook page, some of which he said are constructive criticism, while others often left him “not knowing whether to laugh or cry.”     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-05-17
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Red, white and blue smoke trails emitted from the “Thunder Tigers” spanned across the sky above the Presidential Office Building in Taipei City on Tuesday morning as part of the rehearsal for the presidential inauguration ceremony on May 20.

President-elect Tsai Ing-wen and Vice President-elect Chen Chien-jen will be sworn in during the ceremony.

Five fighter jets of the Air Force’s aerobatic display team were rehearsing flying low in formation to salute the country’s first female president and commander-in-chief, emitting long colored smoke trails in the sky. The jets were accelerating over the venue as the song “Beautiful Formosa” was playing in the background.

Tourists and pedestrians at the square of the National Theater and Concert Hall stopped to watch the stunning show, letting out sighs of amazement and hurriedly taking out cell phones and cameras to shoot.     [FULL  STORY]

‘MISUNDERSTANDING’:The New Southbound Policy Office head said that the policy would not clash with cross-strait trade and could even be complementary

Taipei Times
Date: May 18, 2016
By: Staff writer, with CNA

Former Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (黃志芳), who has been named as the head of

the New Southbound Policy Office, yesterday said that if Taiwan does not quickly expand its influence in Southeast Asia, it is likely to lose its edge in the region.

“Taiwan’s new southbound policy is getting a late start compared with other countries in the world,” Huang said, adding that the US, Japan, Australia, South Korea and China have been active in the region for many years.

“If Taiwan does not catch up quickly, the nation’s industry and economic advantages in ASEAN would gradually erode. This is the crux of the new southbound policy,” he said.

Speaking at a forum on the new southbound policy, Huang described the central tenet of the initiative as turning ASEAN into an extension of Taiwan’s domestic market.

If Taiwan still has an edge anywhere in the world, it would be in ASEAN, he said, adding that the edge might only last for five more years as the region makes rapid progress.

“If Taiwan does not seize the opportunities in the next five years, it is likely to be left with no advantage at all,” he said.

Taiwan first promoted a “go south” policy in the 1990s that tried to encourage companies to shift investment to Southeast Asia rather than heading to China in the hope of leveraging Taiwan’s economic might into political clout.

However, the policy gradually lost steam during the latter years of then-president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) administration, especially after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-05-16
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

ATaiwanese short film, The Day to Choose, directed by Soochow University student Leon Lee, has won the Best Lead Actor in a Foreign Language Film from the 2016 International Filmmaker Festival of World Cinema NICE.

Lee, a senior of German Department, said that he regarded the abolition of death penalty, a controversy packed with political considerations, is ultimately a philosophical issue. Therefore, he left an open-ended closing for viewers to come to their own conclusions.

Executive producer Cheng Kuang-Yu, director of the university’s Chinese Language Center, said he saw Lee’s potential in the campus film festival and decided to help him realize his dream.

The script was a joint creation by Lee and Cheng. The 20-minute film took them three days to shoot, three months to edit, and a total of NT$600,000 to produce.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/05/16
By: Hsieh Chia-chen and S.C. Chang

Taipei, May 16 (CNA) The Ministry of National Defense (MND) on Monday dismissed as

“untrue” some media reports that China has raised its war preparedness by deploying Dongfeng 21D missiles in Xiamen, opposite the Taiwan-held Kinmen Islands.

Taiwanese media cited bowenpress.com, an overseas-based Chinese-language media outlet, as saying that China was moving Dongfeng 21D missiles, known as “aircraft carrier killers,” to its southeastern coast just days before the inauguration of a new president in Taiwan.

Discrediting such reports as “not factual,” Taiwan’s defense ministry said it has a good grasp of China’s military movements and urged people to “take it easy” rather than panic.

President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, whose pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party is far more wary of relations with China than the incumbent Kuomintang (KMT) government, will take office on May 20.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: May 16, 2016

Taiwan high school students won a top prize, eight grand awards and four special awards for

their best performance to date at the prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair May 14 in the U.S. city of Phoenix.

“I am very proud of these outstanding students,” said Chu Nan-shyan, director of Taipei City-based National Taiwan Science Education Center under the Ministry of Education, which was the major sponsor of the representation from Taiwan. “The honors underscore the ingenuity of our nation’s youth.”

Staged by Intel since 1950, the 2016 edition of the world’s largest pre-college science competition attracted around 1,300 entries from over 1,760 students in 77 countries and territories worldwide.

Top performer was Chang Pei-hsuan of Taipei Municipal Lishan High School, who took the Best of Math Award of US$5,000 and the category’s first award of US$3,000 for her entry Nested Eggs: Where Brianchon, Pascal and Poncelet Meet. In addition to a grant of US$1,000 for her school, she bagged a trip to Belgium Sept. 15-20 for the EU Contest for Young Scientists. Her entry also picked up third prize of US$500 from the American Mathematical Society.     [FULL  STORY]

PARTISAN POLITICS:The KMT refused to agree to a general assembly floor debate and vote, while declining to state whether the party would present an alternative

Taipei Times
Date: May 17, 2016
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

Efforts to pass a legislative resolution condemning the citation of the “one China” principle in a

WHO invitation letter stalled yesterday after cross-caucus negotiations broke down because of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opposition.

“The KMT’s stance is that there is no need for us to tango with the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] and the New Power Party [NPP] because the only reason we received an invitation using this kind of language is because of the ideology of the incoming administration,” KMT Legislator Lee Yan-hsiu (李彥秀) said. “If the DPP and NPP want to respond, they should do so under the banners of their individual caucuses, rather than using a legislative resolution.”

The nation’s invitation to participate in this year’s World Health Assembly — to be held from Monday to Saturday next week — begins by “recalling” UN Resolution 2758, which in 1971 recognized the People’s Republic of China at the expense of the Republic of China, and goes on to say that the invitation is in line with the “one China” principle.

KMT opposition to an NPP resolution condemning the letter’s wording during a meeting of the general legislative session last week automatically confined it to cross-caucus negotiations.     [FULL  STORY]