Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/13
By: Huang Ya-chuan and Ko Lin

Taipei, March 13 (CNA) The nuclear fuel rods at Taiwan’s Fourth Nuclear Power Plant will take about two to three years to remove, a process that will need to be carried out in stages, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said Monday.

Minister of Economic Affairs Lee Chih-kung (李世光) said during a question-and-answer session at the Legislature that the unused fuel rods can be refurbished and sold, but permission would first need to be obtained from the original exporter, the United States.

Lee told legislators that removal of the 1,744 fuel rods remaining in the nuclear power plant is expected to begin later this year.    [FULL  STORY]

According to popular travel website Travelers Today, the foods are beef noodle soup…

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/13
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — What are five street foods that a visitor to Taipei must not

miss? According to Travelers Today, a popular travel website, they are beef noodle soup, stinky tofu, fried chicken, pork blood cake and Taiwanese sausage. How many of them have you tasted?

Taipei stands out from other places in Asia as a city with numerous night market stalls and street stores that serve the best, most diverse snack foods, according to an article recently published on the website.

The article described beef noodle soup as “a subject of a number of clashes between the best cooks and chefs in all of Taiwan.” That’s true as there are Beef Noodle King competitions here and there in Taiwan throughout the year, and competition always brings out the best. Therefore, as the article said, “Never go home without slurping a steaming hot beef noodle soup.”    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/13
By: Huang Ya-chuan and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, March 13 (CNA) Despite getting rainfall over the past few days, phase-one water

rationing will still have to be carried out in Kaohsiung, the largest city in southern Taiwan, on March 20 as scheduled, a senior Water Resources Agency (WRA) official said Monday.

Under the rationing measure, water pressure will be reduced from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. each day, according to the agency under the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

The ministry last week decided to implement the water rationing measure in Kaohsiung from March 20 onward if that area continues to suffer from insufficient rainfall before that date.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: March 14, 2017
By: The China Post news staff

TAIPEI, Taiwan — U.S. President Donald Trump plans to invite his Chinese counterpart

to his estate in Florida for a two-day summit in April, a U.S. news outlets reported.

According to the news website Axios, Trump will host Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, widely known as his “Winter White House” from April 6 to April 7 “for a lowering-the-temperature summit with vast economic and security implications.”

CNN also cited a senior White House official as confirming such plan, but the U.S. news organization also quoted the official as saying that “the plan is only tentative at the moment.”

Axios, which first broke the news, cited officials familiar with the planning as saying that the summit will be a “working session” with no golfing planned.   [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-03-12

Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration says it has an idea of which boat may

have caused an oil slick that resulted in serious damage to the ecology of Green Island, off the coast of southeastern Taiwan.

It’s thought that a four-ton container ship is responsible for dumping the oil in the open seas last week. The EPA says that it is contacting the shipping company and the responsible insurance company to seek their assistance in an investigation and possibly to levy a fine.

The EPA stressed that discharging oil in secret is unconscionable, and that it will stop at nothing to bring the perpetrators to justice.  [FULL  STORY]

Whether you want to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland with alcohol or sports, you have the option to

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/03/13
By: Tomás Francis Swinburne, Taiwan News, Contributing Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — St. Patrick’s Day is an annual event that celebrates, not only

the patron saint of Ireland, but also the very nature of being Irish. Recently, the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has stated that there is no need for an Irish “Independence Day” because we already have one, St. Patrick’s Day.

Although it is a celebration of being Irish, nobody should feel left out. After all, it has been surmised that on March 17, everyone is Irish for a day. Even St. Patrick was not Irish and he is a figure of Irishness.

Luckily for everyone in Taipei, this year’s St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Friday. Although the number of Irish people in Taiwan is not something to particularly brag about, this has not prevented festivities from happening.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/03/12
By: Yan Ssu-jui and Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, March 12 (CNA) The Gro Brundtland Week of Women in Sustainable Development kicked off on Sunday at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU)in Tainan with the aim of promoting public interest in sustainable development and honoring female researchers from developing countries and Taiwan.

The five winners of this year’s Gro Brundtland Award attended the opening ceremony and will receive their awards on March 17, according to the Tang Prize Foundation.

The winners are Fathiah Zakham, an assistant researcher at Hodeidah University in Yemen; Farah Fathima, an assistant professor at India’s St. John’s Medical College; Phyllis Awor, a post doctoral fellow from Uganda’s Makerere University; Wafa Al-Jamal, a prostate cancer research fellow at the UK’s University of East Anglia; and Yen Yi-chun, a research fellow from Singapore’s Duke-NUS Medical School.   [FULL  STORY]