American Buddhist Net

...The Department of Health wants to make tobacco use one of the criteria for deciding what age rating to give a film, a move that could mean some animated movies are out of bounds for children.

"Smoking (in movies) has a much worse impact on health than sex and violence," the department said in a statement posted on its website.

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President Ma Ying-jeou is in a hurry to sign an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement so he can realize his ultimate aim of unification with China, reports quoted experts yesterday.

Ma and his government have been pushing for the ECFA to be signed in May or June, despite widespread opposition within Taiwan.

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Environmentalists believe that Taiwanese Buddhists are upsetting the eco-system with their good intentions.

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This same argument goes on year after year, but nothing changes. It is a disgrace that Taiwanese Buddhists are still defending this ignorant practice which causes so much more harm than good. ABN

More than 4,000 Taiwan men sought help after being abused by wives last year, the Central News Agency said Sunday.

In 2009, 4,428 men called the family abuse hot line set up by the interior ministry to seek help, after being abused by their wives, up from 1,325 in 2002, it said.

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Waitresses wield swords and flare flames at diners, who have to get past a moat before sitting at their table in the dimly lit dining hall.

The same customers are also encouraged to take photos with the warrior-like waitresses, who dress in black or red to look like ninjas in keeping with the theme of a dark but lively restaurant that opened last month in Taiwan's capital.

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TAIPEI - A TAIWANESE official has urged citizens to procreate amid fears the Year of the Tiger may bring reduced reproduction on the island already with one of the world's lowest birth rates.

Births have long dropped during the Year of the Tiger as Chinese believe Tiger babies could be vicious and bring harm to relatives.

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TAIPEI - The small group gathered after dark at Taipei's Tamshui River with tanks of catfish could be easily mistaken for fishermen if not for their sombre looks and what they do to the animals. Reciting Buddhist prayers, they haul one tank after the other to the river's edge and tip it, releasing the meaty, shiny fish into the black water.

"May good karma come back to us," they chant at the end of the ceremony, one of hundreds that take place every year in Taiwan.

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The basic idea of saving lives is good, but the way this practice is done often leads to more problems--the animals are released into the wrong environment, they are weak and cannot survive, or they have been caught for the sole purpose of selling them to Buddhists. It is long past time for the Buddhist community bring some wisdom to this, or quit doing it altogether. Wisdom is the preeminent Buddhist virtue. Compassion without wisdom is not good Buddhist practice. This should be obvious. ABN

The Tzu-Chi Foundation which was founded by a nun in Taiwan has undergone a miraculous growth. It now has 10 million members in 47 countries who do charity work around the world and save the environment in the process.

AS a charity organisation, the growth of the Tzu-Chi Foundation is miraculous. Started off in 1966 by a Buddhist nun with a group of 30 housewives doing voluntary work, the Taiwan-based organisation today has 10 million members worldwide with branches in 47 countries.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China threatened U.S. firms who sells weapons to Taiwan with sanctions on Saturday, as Beijing ratcheted up the pressure in a ballooning crisis that will widen already deep rifts in their relationship.

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The United States approved 6.4 billion US dollars in weapons for Taiwan to help counter China's growing military, angering the rising Asian giant which warned of "serious" consequences.

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In the House of Commons a political fight is little more than a mildly-worded disagreement - but in Taiwain it's more akin to a violent football brawl.

In the island nation's most recent melee, more than 70 MPs punched and wrestled each other to the ground, yanked clothing and hurled anything in a politician's grasp.

One member of the governing party even claimed that he had been bitten by a member of the opposition.

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Taipei - Taiwanese Buddhists packed relief materials for Haiti earthquake survivors Sunday, while other civic groups were seeking donations and sending medical teams to the Caribbean nation.

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A fugitive on the run for 15 years was arrested after nostalgia for stewed pork rice caused him to return to Taiwan, a news report said Saturday. Chang Wen-tzung, 56, escaped to China after he was charged with illegally consuming the controlled substance codeine, the Central News Agency said.

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TAIPEI: An eco-conscious couple in Taiwan has opened a small schoolhouse built with donated newspapers fed through a homemade blender, the chief architect said.

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Taipei - Taiwan plans to apply for World Heritage status for the complex Chinese characters that China stopped using after 1949 but Taiwan continues to use today, President Ma Ying-jeou said Saturday. "In order to preserve the world's oldest and most beautiful language, I have entrusted minister without portfolio Ovid Tzeng to prepare for making the application," he told an international seminar on teaching Chinese, held in Taipei.

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Nantou, Taiwan, Dec. 24 (CNA) China's top negotiator with Taiwan visited the famous Buddhist Chung Tai Chan Monastery in central Taiwan's Nantou County Thursday amid mild protests from pro-independence activists.

Chen Yunlin, president of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), was greeted by more than 500 Buddhist followers who lined up at the main entrance to the sprawling temple complex to welcome him.

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Personally, I think Taiwanese are crazy to fall for the reunification-with-the-motherland nonsense. I think it is even crazier for Taiwanese Buddhists to fall for Chinese-patriotic-Buddhism, which will follow reunification. ABN

Taipei - A Taiwan court sentenced a man to 10 years in jail for raping his grandmother in a Buddhist temple, a newspaper reported Thursday. The Panciao District Court passed the verdict against Ah Cheng, 20, Wednesday in the county seat of Taipei county in northern Taiwan, the Liberty Times said.

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TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwanese prosecutors have indicted former President Chen Shui-bian on new bribery and money-laundering charges.

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Falungong members practice duing a demonstration outside of the Windsor hotel which are holding the Taiwan and China talks in the central Taichung city on December 22. Top envoys from Taiwan and China began talks behind lines of barbed wire shielding them from protesters desperate to stop the island from being sucked into the mainland's orbit.

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Taiwan, China sign trade agreements amid protest clashes - Summary

Taichung, Taiwan - Tens of thousands of pro-Taiwan independence supporters Sunday took to the streets in the central city of Taichung, protesting against what they viewed as an improper China policy and Beijing's suppression of the island. The banner- and flag-waving protesters shouted "No more under-the-table deals with China" and "Take care of our rice bowls" as they marched in the city.

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A Bolivian student beat off heart throbs from around the world to win an international male beauty pageant in Taiwan on Saturday.

Bruno Kettels, 20, won out against 30 other hopefuls to take the Mister International crown.

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Taiwan's parliament changed laws on Friday to ban gratuitous images of sex and violence in the island's racy media after a surge in parental complaints.

Passage of a bill that outlaws explicit photographs, television scenes and online graphics came after officials issued two fines, totalling T$1 million (R233 000), against the publisher of a mainstream newspaper, Apple Daily, over its online imagery.

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Welcome to the new world of Maybe Journalism — a best guess at the news as it might well have been, rendered as a video game and built on a bed of pure surmise.

A computer-generated “news report” of the Tiger Woods S.U.V. crash — complete with a robotic-looking simulation of Mr. Woods’s wife chasing him with a golf club — has become a top global online video of the moment, perhaps offering a glimpse at the future of journalism, tabloid division. (No matter that the police said she was using the club to release Mr. Woods from the car.)

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Taipei, Dec. 6 (CNA) A Buddhist nun has taken in more than 70 orphans and displaced children, raised them and allowed them to go to school over the past 11 years, because she cannot bear to see poor children suffer.

Zhenrong has managed to establish an orphanage in Wujie township of the eastern county of Yilan despite only meagre savings, laboring to make ends meet by producing and selling dried Chinese radish, and spinning "like a Tibetan prayer wheel" as she ferries the kids to and from school.

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When Yeh You-chin was a boy half a century ago, he ate migratory birds with relish, but now he is at the forefront of efforts to preserve the feathered visitors to his south Taiwan home. Yeh, the 59-year-old chief of Fangshan township, recently opened an exhibition hall devoted to the brown shrike, which passes through the area every year-and until recently did so at great risk to itself. "I remember how the air was filled with the strong smell of roasted shrikes," said Yeh. "Some villagers made more money catching birds than people in the cities.

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A US model has flown into Taipei to sue a Taiwan man for using his photos to lure up to 20 women into sex and defraud others, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

'I am shocked. How could he do such a thing?' Richie Kul, 29, asked in an interview with the Apple Daily.

...Hsu posted photos of Kul online and used the images to lure women. Going under the name Angor, he introduced himself as a 30-year-old son of a Taiwan father and French mother. He claimed to be on business in the US but looking to marry a Taiwan woman.

However, 'Angor' would not consider marrying a woman unless she was prepared to have sex with his father - whom Hsu portrayed, claiming to have terminal prostate cancer and requiring constant sex to say alive.

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VENERABLE Hui Li was branded a devil and a “poisonous weed” by the locals in the early days of his missionary work in South Africa.

“I was condemned by the local people, government officials and people of other faiths. They did not know what Buddhism is and have not seen a Buddhist monk in robes before,” he said.

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Yahoo's latest embarrassment seems like a sign that the company is just trying too hard to be cool

A big ad partnership from Microsoft may in time help Yahoo rediscover its magic, but over the last year the company has seemed very lost. With its search engine powered by Bing and its team now focusing on APIs and the advertising partnership, Yahoo has yet to prove itself a legitimate competitor to Google.

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PENGHU, Taiwan — Each day, ferries ply the waters between the 90 small islands and islets of Taiwan's Penghu archipelago. They bring a cargo of humans, pigs, scooters, cars and daily necessities, such as Taiwan Beer.

And cows.

Penghu's bovines are raised and fattened on the grasslands of the small islands here, then transported to market by ferry. Workers put a harness on each cow, lifting it on and off the ferry with a crane. The process involves much cursing, yelling, smacking and kicking the cows, who shy away from the harness and don't appear to enjoy the mid-air ride.

Would you?

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TAIPEI (Reuters Life!) - A plastic bottle thrown into a Taipei recycling bin could be reincarnated as a blanket to warm disaster victims in any of 20 countries, thanks to a unique project by the world's largest Buddhist charity.

The Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation has been taking plastic bottles from the waste stream of Taipei, a city of 2.6 million, for three years to convert them into about 244,000 polyester blankets intended for disaster zones.

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