Taipei Times
Date: Mar 24, 2016
By: Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday downplayed a local media report alleging that a KMT heavyweight was seeking to sell off party properties and the state-owned Grand Hotel to a US casino tycoon.

“The Grand Hotel belongs to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. The party has no association with the hotel — let alone trying to sell it,” KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Lee Ming-hsien (李明賢) said yesterday.

The content of the report is clearly unsubstantiated, Lee said, without elaborating.

Lee was responding to a report published yesterday in the latest issue of Chinese-language Next Magazine, which said that a high-ranking KMT official approached a Las Vegas casino magnate visiting Taiwan, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Taipei on Mar. 9, to sound him out about purchasing three KMT properties and the Grand Hotel.

The Grand Hotel is affiliated with the “Taiwan Dunmu Association,” a private organization established in 1961 by KMT heavyweights that is overseen by the transport ministry.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 23, 2016
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

National Security Bureau (NSB) officials yesterday said they are looking into amending the law on access to restricted areas, after revelations that two German visitors were detained briefly last month outside an air base in Taichung on suspicion of espionage.

Bureau Deputy Director Wang Te-lin (王德麟) said the agency would discuss the matter with lawmakers and seek to amend the Military Vital Area Regulations (要塞堡壘地帶法) and related laws.

The case was the subject of discussion in the legislature on Monday, after it was learned the two German visitors took photographs of advanced jet fighters and their armaments during training flights on the perimeter of Taichung’s Ching Chuan Kang Air Base, which houses the Air Force Composite 427th Wing.

The German pair might have been spying for China by taking photographs with powerful cameras of advanced aircraft and passing the images on to Chinese media outlets, because pictures of armed forces activities and deployed weaponry have been published on Chinese military news sites, Wang said.

Wang said that the bureau had checked the backgrounds of the two Germans.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-03-21
By: Central News Agency

Former Vice President Vincent Siew is expected to express Taiwan’s stance during the Boao Forum for Asia that kicks off Tuesday in China that economic and trade relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should not be affected by political change, an executive of the Cross-Strait Common Market Foundation said Monday.

Siew will depart Wednesday for the forum in Hainan Province in southern China at the head of a 33-member Taiwanese delegation composed of business representatives and economic and trade specialists, said Chen Te-sheng, executive director of the foundation that is organizing the visit.

Siew will meet with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang March 24 and attend a dinner party hosted by Zhang Zhijun, China’s Taiwan affairs minister, that evening, said Chen.

Siew will be representing Taiwan in his capacity as honorary chairman of the foundation, Chen went on, noting that Siew will hold a press conference regarding his meeting with Li after the dinner party.

With less than two months before president-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s administration is sworn in May 20, the timing is crucial for Siew to call on the Chinese authorities to facilitate cross-strait economic and trade exchanges through a platform trusted by both sides.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/03/21
By: Tang Sheng-yang and S.C. Chang

Taipei, March 21 (CNA) The head of Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau on Monday used the word masochism to describe those Taiwanese who buy a Japanese forecast that temperature could drop to a low of 5 degrees Celsius on March 27 in Taipei.

The Japan Weather Association (JWA), a private weather forecasting company in Japan, predicted Monday that Taipei temperatures will start to drop March 24. On March 27, the mercury will dip to only 5 degrees and rise to 15 degrees at the highest, with occasional rain, it said.

Taiwan’s CWB said a strong cold air mass from southern China will arrive in Taiwan March 24, bringing temperatures down sharply over the weekend, with the mercury likely to dip to 9-10 degrees Celsius in northern parts of the country.

Temperatures throughout the country are expected to rebound slightly and the rain will ease up March 27, the CWB said.

And yet the Japanese forecast still got played up by the local media, upsetting CWB chief Hsin Tsai-chin (辛在勤) so much that, in a Facebook post, he wrote, “As Taiwanese, do we have to be so masochistic? Do we have to mock ourselves often that Taiwan’s moon is not as round as a foreign one?”     [FULL  STORY]

Climate change has had an adverse impact on the indigenous people’s culture and livelihood around the world, because they can no longer grow their traditional crops as a result, said Lin Yih-ren, chair of the Graduate Institute of Humanities in Medicine of Taipei Medical University.

The declaration, signed on the first day of the two-day inaugural alliance meeting of the International Network of Indigenous Ecological Farmers (INIEF) at the university, said in order to prevent the harm that could be created by GM crops to the environment, indigenous people will not plant such crops, but will seek the help of farmers and international seed banks to find suitable replacements to be grown on their land.

It also calls for support from governments and international organizations in the INIEF’s efforts to tackle challenges facing indigenous people, and welcomes indigenous people, farmers’ groups and other organizations to join the network.     [FULL  STORY]