Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/04/10
By: Huang Chiao-wen and Kuo Chung-han

Taipei, April 10 (CNA) The Ministry of Economic Affairs is considering measures to promote

water recycling and reuse, especially in the industrial sector, to prevent the amount of water supplied to industrial users from growing any further, an official said Friday.

Taiwan is currently stuck in its worst drought in decades, and strict water rationing measures, including suspending water supplies to households two days a week, were launched in northern Taiwan on Wednesday on a rotating basis, to preserve dwindling supplies.

In Tainan and Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, water supplies to industrial users will be cut by 10 percent beginning on April 15.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-04-10
By: CNA

Taiwan’s main opposition Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) basic principle in handling

cross-Taiwan Strait relations is “maintaining the status quo,” the party’s chair said during a party meeting Thursday, as she tried to ease concerns over the DPP’s China policy ahead of next year’s presidential race.

Tsai Ing-wen was quoted by DPP spokesperson Cheng Yun-peng as saying that she is confident of handling cross-strait ties well and will try to “avoid incidents” and will not provoke “contradictions, confrontations or conflicts.”

Tsai made her remarks during a closed-door meeting of the party’s China policy committee, according to Cheng, when many people at home and overseas are concerned about the party’s China policy.

The spokesperson quoted Tsai as saying that she has realized her responsibility in handling Taiwan’s relations with China well should the DPP regains power in 2016, which she acknowledged is a “challenging task.”     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/04/09
By: Claudia Liu and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, April 9 (CNA) An annual forum between Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) and its mainland

Chinese counterpart, the Communist Party of China (CPC), is set to be held in late May, giving rise to the possibility of a meeting between the leaders of the two parties, an unidentified KMT source said Thursday.

The 10th KMT-CPC forum, formally named “Cross-Strait Economic, Trade and Culture Forum,” should have taken place last year but was postponed for many reasons, according to the source speaking on condition of anonymity.

But it looks like it will go ahead this year, according to the source. The KMT will issue a press release on Friday to reveal the time and location of the event as well as who will represent the KMT to attend the forum.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-04-09
By: Wang Kun-yi

Two American F-18 fighters made an emergency landing at a Tainan Air Force base because

of a mechanical glitch on April 1 to protect the safety of the planes and the pilots.

Beijing reacted by lodging a strong protest and expressed the hope that the US abide by the “one China” policy and the Three Communiques.

The fighters were then repaired and left for Singapore to take part as scheduled in an air-to-air exercise called Commando Sting, but the ripple effects of the incident could linger for a while.

Many scholars across the Taiwan Strait and in the United States have read political overtones into the incident rather than treating it simply as an emergency landing necessitated by a malfunctioning aircraft.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/04/09
By: Chen Wei-ting and Scully Hsiao

Taipei, April 9 (CNA) A Taiwan-China agreement on meteorological cooperation will give Taiwan access to China’s weather data, which will facilitate cloud seeding efforts to fight the island’s worst drought in decades, a weather official said Thursday.

The agreement will give Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau an early grasp of the movements of clouds over southern China when they start to move east toward Taiwan, said Central Weather Bureau Director-General Shin Tzay-chyn.

The bureau will then pass on the information to the Water Resources Agency to give the agency an early start in its cloud seeding efforts, Shin said.     [FULL  STORY]