The Straits Times
Date: May 25, 2015
By: Eunice Quek

In the palette of the food world, diners are normally attracted to buns baked to a golden brown, cakes studded with colourful berries, meats jazzed up with leafy greens and sauces that add pops of colour to a dish.

But, sometimes, black has its allure.

Chefs and bakers are rolling out black food, ranging from buns to macarons to sushi, with the colour derived mainly from charcoal powder or squid ink. It is the black sheen that chefs have taken a shine to.

Snack chain Shihlin Taiwan Street Snacks, with outlets at nex, The Clementi Mall and Tampines Mall, has introduced squid ink seafood tempura, with squid ink in the batter.

Japanese restaurant Oceans of Seafood at Pasarbella is introducing kuro goma tamago sushi today. Black sesame (goma) paste is used to colour the Japanese omelette and it may well be used to colour the rice in future.     [FULL  STORY]

Nikkei Asian Review
By: DEBBY WU, Nikkei staff writer

KINMEN, Taiwan — A senior Taiwanese official on Saturday told his Chinese counterpart that Beijing should respond to the island’s concerns over a new security threat China seems to have posed.

Zhang Zhijun, left, director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, and Andrew Hsia, minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, discussed various economic issues on the Taiwanese islet of Kinmen on Saturday.

The incident reflects ongoing political tensions between the two sides, even though relations have thawed and even warmed since Taiwan’s mainland-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008.

China has never abandoned the possible use of force as an option to achieve reunification with the island of 23 million. Taiwan split off from China in 1949 amid civil war.

“We have solemnly expressed our displeasure with China’s inclusion of Taiwan in a new security bill,” Andrew Hsia, Taiwan’s minister of mainland affairs, said after his meeting with Zhang Zhijun, director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office. “However, Zhang told me this has been China’s longstanding and unchanging stance and that ‘the case has been closed.'”     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/05/25
By: C.Y. Fan and Ted Chen

Taipei, May 25 (CNA) “I am Taiwanese, and I hope to bring my acting career back

home someday,” said Harry Lu (呂晉宇), a Taiwanese actor based in Vietnam during an interview with CNA in Hanoi.

Lu, 23, was raised in Vietnam, and has been working as an actor while running his own business in Ho Chi Minh City.

After graduating from RMIT University in Vietnam with a degree in marketing and working as a photo model, Lu plunged headfirst into the entertainment industry without any prior experience at the urging of his friends.

Lu’s big break came when he was selected as the male lead for the 2014 film “Than Tuon” (Idol), a love story of a pair of aspiring actors hoping to gain fame.

His captivating good looks and acting skills earned him six 2014 Golden Kite Prize nominations, and his starring roles in two other movies garnered two more Golden Kite Prize nominations this year.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/05/24
By: Chen Ching-fang and S.C. Chang

Taipei, May 24 (CNA) Taiwan is studying whether to follow the European Union’s footsteps in banning estrogen in cosmetics that may cause endocrine disorders or cancer and pollute the environment, an official said Sunday.

Chu Yu-ju, a section chief of the Food and Drug Administration in charge of medical equipment and cosmetics, said a ban on the use of three kinds of estrogen — estradiol, estrone and ethinylestradiol — in cosmetic products could go into force next year at the earliest in order to ensure consumer safety and protect the environment.

FDA data show that European Union, Canada and member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have prohibited the use of these three chemical ingredients in cosmetics. But Taiwan and Japan just put them on a control list and their manufacture or import is not allowed without permit.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-05-24
By: CNA

Taiwan expressed gratitude Saturday to the US Senate Armed Services Committee for having inserted provisions promoting military cooperation with Taiwan in the 2016 National Defense Authorization Bill.

“The Ministry of National Defense is grateful to members of the US Senate Armed Forces Committee for pushing a bill that would strengthen the Republic of China’s self-defense,” said ministry spokesman Major General Luo Shou-he.

His remarks came after the bill, which includes a section on Taiwan’s asymmetric military capabilities and bilateral training activities, cleared the Armed Services Committee on May 14. It will be submitted to the full floor for a vote.

The section says that the US, in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act, should continue to make available to Taiwan such defense articles and services as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/05/24
By: Zep Hu, Chou Yi-ling and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, May 24 (CNA) Kitchen knives being made in Kinmen from old artillery shell

casings symbolize that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have buried the hatchet and are working for peace, a Chinese official said Sunday in the Taiwan-held outlying county.

Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO, 國台辦), also said he hoped the two sides could maintain peace while visiting the steel knife factory that makes knives from the shells fired by China at Kinmen between 1958 and 1978.

During the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the People’s Liberation Army fired around 450,000 shells at the Kinmen Islands located just kilometers off China’s coast to try to retake them from the Republic of China (Taiwan).

More recently, Kinmen has become famous for its production of cleavers made from the PLA shells.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-05-23
By: CNA

People in northern, central and southern Taiwan as well as northeastern Taiwan can

expect showers and thunderstorms Saturday and Sunday as the first weather front of this year’s monsoon season moved northward, the Central Weather Bureau forecast Friday.

The front will continue to affect Taiwan through May 31, the bureau said.

The weather front brought heavy rain to southern Taiwan on Friday evening, with one rain collection station in Taiwu township in Pingtung county getting up to 58 millimeters of rain in a single hour.

From midnight Thursday to 9:20pm Friday, 249.5 mm of water had fallen on Xidawu Mountain in another part of the township, the most rainfall produced in a single day anywhere in Taiwan since the current rainy season began to affect the country a week ago.     [FULL  STORY]