Want China Times
Date: 2015-06-22
By: CNA

A 29-year-old Taiwanese pastry chef has received an offer to work at the Elysee Palace in Paris

next month after a month and a half internship there, the United Daily News reported Sunday.

Hsing Lun-yi, who returned to Taiwan for a brief visit recently to get engaged, will be the first Taiwanese ever to work at the official residence of France’s president, the Chinese-language newspaper said.

Hsing found his passion for desserts only after graduating from Nan Ying Vocation High School’s Department of Data Processing in Tainan.

He began working part-time at Taiwanese restaurants and then saved NT$1.5 million (US$48,750) on his own to pay for studies in France, the report said.     [FULL  STORY]

CHINA-CENTERED AUDIENCE:A get-together for Taiwanese businesspeople based in China was attended by some top Ministry of Economic Affairs and SEF personnel

Taipei Times
Date:  Jun 23, 2015
By: Chen Wei-han  /  Staff writer

Top officials delivered a mixed message to Taiwanese businesspeople working in China yesterday,

with Minister of Economic Affairs John Deng (鄧振中) vowing to create a more investment-friendly environment to entice investment in Taiwan, while Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Lin Join-sane (林中森) called for Taiwan’s participation in Beijing “One Belt, One Road” trade intiative a way to boost local businesses international visibility.

Speaking at a Dragon Boat Festival get-together in Taipei for China-based Taiwanese, Deng said Taiwan’s business environment has an edge over China in terms of transparency and rule of law, while Taiwanese enterprises have seen their operating costs in China rise because of higher labor costs and more stringent environmental and labor laws.

The complaints China-based Taiwanese businesspeople file with the ministry are mostly disputes about land-use rights and compensation for land acquisition, he said.

The government has committed itself to assisting Taiwanese businesses in investing at home and positioning themselves globally, Deng said, referring to a new online export momentum assessment system.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-06-21
By: CNA

Taiwan authorities are asking employers of foreign workers in Taiwan and recruitment agencies to

step up animal rights education to help prevent incidents of cats or dogs being eaten, the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) under the country’s Ministry of Labor said.

Most of Taiwan’s foreign workers come from Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, where it is legal to eat cats and dogs. Some migrant workers have been seen preparing meals using cat or dog meat, sometimes leading to arguments with local people and even court cases.

According to Taiwan’s Animal Protection Act (revised in February 2015), anyone found to have caused the death of a dog or a cat or other animals banned from slaughter is subject to a maximum prison sentence of one year, in conjunction with a fine of between NT$100,000-$1 million (US$3,250-$32,550).

The southern city of Tainan saw a case each in 2013 and 2014. In one of the cases, a foreign worker was fined NT$50,000 (US$1,600) for killing a dog under the previously more lenient provisions of the Animal Protection Act.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/06/21
By: Lu Hsin-huei and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, June 21 (CNA) The Ministry of National Defense rebutted a report Sunday that the data link

interface of the PAVE Phased Array Warning System (PAVE PAWS) Taiwan received from the United States in 2013 has yet to be integrated with crucial two missile warning centers.

The radar warning system and the two missile warning centers in Taipei and Hualien County, respectively, have all begun operations and “are running smoothly,” said ministry spokesman Luo Shou-he (羅紹和).

“It is not true to say that the two systems cannot operate normally,” Luo said, but he declined to reveal any further details related to the facilities, which he said are military secrets related to national security.

Luo was responding to a United Evening News report on Sunday that said the PAVE PAW radar system, installed at the Leshan (樂山) military base in a remote mountain area in Hsinchu County, and the missile centers had yet to be connected.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-06-21
By: CNA and Staff Reporter

Presidential candidate for Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang Hung Hsiu-chu said Saturday she is in favor

of maintaining the cross-Taiwan Strait status quo and will spend more time explaining her cross-strait policy.

Hung was responding to an article in the latest issue of the UK-based Economist magazine, in which Hung is described as a politician “stridently in favor of unification.”

The magazine failed to correctly grasp her cross-strait policy, Hung said.

Hung said she advocates that Taipei and Beijing sign a peace accord, but only under the preconditions that such a pact does not violate the ROC Constitution, that the two sides are on an equal footing, that China agrees to renounce the use of force against Taiwan, that Taiwan gets more international space and that the pact obtains the approval of Taiwan’s people.

She said a cross-strait peace accord is not a unification treaty but an agreement that is aimed at cementing and maintaining the status quo.

Taipei Times
Date:  Jun 22, 2015
By: Loa Iok-sin  /  Staff reporter

Despite having sought a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nomination for next year’s legislative

election, Soochow University associate professor Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) yesterday announced that he would join the New Power Party (NPP) and withdraw from running for district representation.

“I’ve never joined any political party, but since I agree with the NPP’s ideologies and would like to share the responsibility with my friends in the NPP to create a new political party with progressive values, I hereby announce that I am joining the party,” Hsu told a news conference at NPP headquarters in Taipei yesterday.

“I have also decided to withdraw from running for the legislative seats representing the eight electoral districts in Taichung, including Fengyuan (豐原), Shigang (石岡), Shinshe (新社), Dongshi (東勢) and Heping (和平), and plan to support DPP nominee Hsieh Chih-chung (謝志忠),” he added.

Hsu said his father is a native of Shengang District (神岡), and his mother comes from Fengyuan, which is why he decided to help NPP candidate Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) and the DPP’s Hsieh in their respective electoral districts, rather than running himself.     [FULL  STORY]

Reuters
Date: Jun 21, 2015
By: Jeremy Wagstaff

Security researchers have many names for the hacking group that is one of the suspects for the

cyberattack on the U.S. government’s Office of Personnel Management: PinkPanther, KungFu Kittens, Group 72 and, most famously, Deep Panda. But to Jared Myers and colleagues at cybersecurity company RSA, it is called Shell Crew, and Myers’ team is one of the few who has watched it mid-assault — and eventually repulsed it.

Myers’ account of a months-long battle with the group illustrates the challenges governments and companies face in defending against hackers that researchers believe are linked to the Chinese government – a charge Beijing denies.

“The Shell Crew is an extremely efficient and talented group,” Myers said in an interview.Shell Crew, or Deep Panda, are one of several hacking groups that Western cybersecurity companies have accused of hacking into U.S. and other countries’ networks and stealing government, defense and industrial documents.The attack on the OPM computers, revealed this month, compromised the data of 4 million current and former federal employees, raising U.S. suspicions that Chinese hackers were building huge databases that could be used to recruit spies.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/06/20
By: Chen Wei-ting and Maubo Chang

Taipei, June 20 (CNA) A tropical storm, which would be the eighth of the Pacific typhoon season, could take shape in the next couple of days but it is not a threat to directly hit Taiwan, the Central Weather Bureau said Saturday.

The potential tropical storm is currently a tropical depression between the Macclesfield Bank and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

If it does become a tropical storm, it will follow a northward path and barrel through Guangdong province in southern China before breaking up, the bureau said.

Whether it develops into a storm or not, the weather system is expected to bring rain to southern and southeastern Taiwan and thunderstorms to central and northern Taiwan after Tuesday, the bureau said.

Want China Times
Date: 2015-06-20
By: CNA

President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan said that his administration will honor two people who helped

Chinese people and Jews during World War II and soldiers who fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War, one of the Asian fronts of the war, as the Republic of China will hold a series of events in July to mark the 70th anniversary of its victory in the war.

The ROC’s eight-year fight against Japan (1937-1945) saw Japan and the other Axis Powers defeated by the Allied Powers.

As part of a series of commemorative events, Ma said that his administration will honor German businessman John Rabe and ROC diplomat Ho Feng-shan in recognition of their efforts to save the lives of many people during World War II.

Rabe is known for helping to create a safety zone in Nanking in 1937 when that city–then the capital of China–fell to Japanese troops. The zone provided shelter for more than 200,000 civilians and prevented them from being killed by the Japanese army.     [FULL  STORY]