Page Two

Taiwan, China to sign taxation, air safety agreements

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/08/18
By: Zep Hu and Jay Chen

Taipei, Aug. 18 (CNA) Taiwan and China will sign two agreements on taxation and aviation safety in their next high-level meeting to be held in Fuzhou, China later this month, a senior official of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) announced Tuesday.

The meeting between the chiefs of Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China’s Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) will take place Aug. 24-26, said deputy MAC chief Lin Chu-Chia.

Students devastated by the ignorance of the Minister of Education

Taiwan News
Date: 2015-08-17
By: Jocylin FC, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

In many civil and student moments, the manipulation of the dilemma between civilians

Students are disappointed with MOE. Central News Agency

Students are disappointed with MOE. Central News Agency

and policemen is a frequently used techniques.

The students who walked around Taiwan to protest against the altered curriculum saw the open schedule of the Minister of Education and went to the high school where the minister was supposed to go. However, the minister changed his plan at the last minute. The students were devastated that the Ministry of Education pays no attention to the voices of the students after all forms of demonstration. Despite the tension portrayed by the media, the policemen of the area gave them bottled water, encouraged and comforted them.     [FULL  STORY]

TRA ticket booking operations return to normal

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/08/17
By: Chen Wei-ting and Bear Lee

Taipei, Aug. 17 (CNA) The ticket booking operation of the Taiwan Railway Administration SONY DSC(TRA) returned to normal at 10:18 p.m. Monday after a nearly two-hour total paralysis caused by a power glitch.

The ticket booking operations — on line and on desk at all stations of TRA — was paralyzed after 8:30 p.m. due to the failure of one of the railway operator’s uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems.

The power glitch not only paralyzed on-line booking of tickets. Staff members could not register seats for tickets sold to passengers at all stations.

TRA later offered an apology to the affected travelers for the booking system shutdown.

Plans to launch FORMOSAT-5 with US assistance next year

Want China Times
Date: 2015-08-17
By: Staff Reporter

Taiwan announced plans to launch its new FORMOSAT-5 satellite on a US-built Falcon 9

A previous launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. (Internet photo)

A previous launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. (Internet photo)

two-stage rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California early next year during the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition held between Aug. 13-16, American military expert Wendell Minnick writes in an article for Defense News.

Minnick said FORMOSAT-5 has a remote sensing imager that can provide two-meter panchromatic and four-meter multispectral spatial resolution. A representative of the state-run National Applied Research Laboratories told Minnick that this is the first space program under which Taiwan’s National Space Organization will take full responsibility for the complete satellite system including payload. The solar-powered sun synchronous FORMOSAT-5 is estimated to have a mission life of five years.

While the source declined to comment as to whether the FORMOSAT-5 will have a military payload, the company is currently working with the country’s National Space Organization in the development of FORMOSAT-7, a joint project between National Space Organization and US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to deploy an extended 12-satellite constellation to continue the FORMOSAT-3 program.

‘Youth group’ formed to promote Hung

PUNDITRY AT DAWN:The eight members of the group are to appear on political talk shows to defend the KMT candidate and her views as part of the younger generation

Taipei Times
Date:  Aug 18, 2015
By: Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱)

Eight people chosen by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu’s campaign team to defend Hung and her policies on talk shows yesterday pose during a news conference in Taipei. Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times

Eight people chosen by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu’s campaign team to defend Hung and her policies on talk shows yesterday pose during a news conference in Taipei. Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times

campaign office yesterday announced the organization of a small group of “young” people to defend and promote her campaign pledges on political talk shows.

Voices of young supporters of Hung have long been underestimated on such shows, the office said.

“These young defenders, who were born in the 1970s and the 1980s, aim to shatter the public’s traditional perception of how the KMT runs an election,” Hung campaign office spokesman Lee Chang-chi (李昶志) told a news conference in Taipei.

Chanting “Chu [Hung] has young people’s backs and young people have hers,” the eight members of the group, clad in different colored shirts, told the news conference that the various colors signified the diversity of opinions of younger generations.     [FULL  STORY]

Ma’s cross-strait policies are now consensus: MAC

Taipei Times
Date:  Aug 17, 2015
By Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

The fact that all presidential candidates in next year’s election have formulated cross-strait policies leaning toward those of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration is proof that the president’s policies “have not only worked, but worked well,” Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) said yesterday.

Hsia made the remarks in a speech at the 40th annual convention of the Chinese American Academic Professional Society in New York on Saturday evening.

“Given that every candidate in the Jan. 16 presidential election has drawn their cross-strait policies close to those of the current government, it indicates the effectiveness and success of Ma’s promotion of the ‘1992 consensus’ and the principle of ‘one China, with each side having its own interpretations of what the term means,’” Hsia said.     [FULL  STORY]

President blasts debate over whether ‘comfort women’ forced (update)

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/08/16
By: Hsieh Chia-chen and Christie Chen

Taipei, Aug. 16 (CNA) President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) stressed Sunday that it is a historical fact that “comfort women” were forced into sexual slavery during World War II, and said the debates surrounding whether these women were forced paint Taiwan in a bad light.

“We should not argue over these questions anymore. They were forced,” Ma said after a screening of the documentary “Song of the Reed” (蘆葦之歌) at the Presidential Office. The documentary chronicles the later years of Taiwanese “comfort women” — women forced into sexual slavery by Japanese forces during World War II.

Ma pointed out that these women are his mother’s age and have all lived through a chaotic time. The president choked up several times after viewing the documentary.     [FULL  STORY]

Private weather services could have cut Taiwan’s typhoon losses

Want China Times
Editorial
Date: 2015-08-16

Considered the strongest tropical storm to have hit Taiwan in years, Typhoon Soudelor

A farmer at his pomelo orchard in Miaoli county after Typhoon Soudelor swept through on Aug. 8. The fruit were weeks away from harvesting. (Photo/Chiang Shih-chu)

A farmer at his pomelo orchard in Miaoli county after Typhoon Soudelor swept through on Aug. 8. The fruit were weeks away from harvesting. (Photo/Chiang Shih-chu)

swept across the island at the weekend leaving enormous damage in its wake, including some NT$700 million (US$21.64 million) of agricultural losses in the run-up to the harvest season for many fruits, including bananas, guavas and pomelos. The case of the latter reflects a failing on the part of Taiwan’s meteorologists, who should have urged farmers to harvest their fruit earlier.

Meteorological satellites showed the typhoon forming in the Pacific near the Marshall Islands, some 4,000 kilometers away from Taiwan, on July 30. The Central Weather Bureau waited 10 days before alerting local people by issuing a sea typhoon warning on Aug. 6, which prompted farmers to rush to harvest their near-ripe fruit, but the warning came too late.

Despite its early detection capability thanks to its grasp of information on El Nino, tropical oceanic currents and high sea temperature on Taiwan’s eastern coast, the Central Weather Bureau could not alert local farmers and enterprises early on as it is legally constrained to providing meteorological information to safeguard the security of people’s lives and properties, rather than value-added information for industrial use. Nor is there a local meteorological firm that could provide such a custom service such as those available in other countries.     [FULL  STORY]

Academics urge committee system change

PLAYING TO THE CROWD?When choosing which committees to sit on, legislators tend to focus on winning potential votes rather than building expertise, academics said

Taipei Times
Date:  Aug 17, 2015
By: Tseng Wei-chen and Chen Wei-han  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

The lack of a seniority system in the Legislative Yuan, that would recognize lawmakers’ competence based on the length of their service on a particular committee, and the high frequency at which legislators switch between committees, contributes to an unsatisfactory legislative performance, lawmakers and academics said.

Seats on the Economics Committee and the Transportation and Communications Committee are the most sought-after in the legislature, and even directly-elected district legislators have to vie for committee assignment via a name-draw, whereas the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee and the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee are common destinations for junior caucus members or legislators-at-large, Soochow University politics professor Hawang Shiow-duan (黃秀端) said.     [FULL  STORY]

Higher wages for foreign domestics possible

Taiwan News
Date: 2015-08-15
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The monthly wage for foreign domestic workers could be raised

Higher wages for foreign domestics possible. Central News Agency

Higher wages for foreign domestics possible. Central News Agency

to NT$17,500 (US$543) in the first hike in 18 years following pressure from their home countries, reports said Saturday.

The Ministry of Labor was scheduled to hold more bilateral talks with the main suppliers of domestic helpers, namely Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, before the end of the month, the Chinese-language United Evening News reported.

In previous rounds of talks, the ministry reportedly took a hard line, but recently, the three Southeast Asian countries joined up to demand a wage hike from the present NT$15,840 (US$491) a month to NT$17,500, making Taiwan less likely to be able to resist pressure. However, the MOL was still hoping it could implement a hike before the end of the year if the new salary was lower than NT$17,000 (US$527), the newspaper reported.

The MOL was preparing several scenarios and formulas which would result in the total wage staying below NT$17,000, reports said. Low-income families could benefit from reductions in employing a foreign domestic. Families with small children or elderly in poor health are the main beneficiaries of using foreign helpers.     [FULL  STORY]