Want China Times
Date: 2015-10-13
By: CNA and Staff Reporter

China should not set conditions on allowing its nationals to transit through

Taiwanese airports on overseas trips, an official in charge of Taiwan’s China policy said Monday.

Taiwan and China have formally discussed the issue since November 2014, with Taipei repeatedly pushing for Beijing to remove barriers that in effect prohibit Chinese citizens from traveling to third destinations through Taiwan, hurting Taiwanese airlines.

Mainland Affairs Council chief Andrew Hsia said it would be fairly simple to put the idea into practice, but China has now linked the issue with a desire to optimize flight routes between the two sides and make them shorter and more efficient.

Taiwan objects to any linking of the two issues, but Hsia said flight route optimization can be discussed, within limits. If there are implications for national security, he said, “we absolutely cannot budge.”     [FULL  STORY]

TRADEOFF?Opposition lawmakers filed complaints accusing the KMT of using financial and other incentives to convince Hung Hsiu-chu to quit the presidential race

Taipei Times
Date:  Oct 14, 2015
By: Jason Pan  /  Staff reporter

The Special Investigation Division (SID) will conduct an investigation into

possible violations of election laws by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), amid allegations that it is pressuring presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) to withdraw from the race, Prosecutor-General Yen Ta-ho (顏大和) said yesterday

SID Director Kuo Wen-tung (郭文東) said that the division would open an official probe as soon as he receives notification from the prosecutor-general’s office.

Yen said that in accordance with the Court Organic Act (法院組織法), the case falls under the purview of the SID, a division of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office.

Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) on Wednesday last week filed a complaint with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office accusing the KMT of contravening the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) by offering Hung financial incentives as a condition for withdrawing in favor of a new candidate to be nominated by the party.     [FULL  STORY]

MAC minister says he will keep an open-minded discussion

Taiwan News
Date: 2015-10-12
By: Ko Lin, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Andrew Hsia said he hopes

high-level cross-strait talks can be sustained in the foreseeable future, reports said Monday.

During a question-and-answer session at the legislature in the morning, Hsia said he will be holding discussions with China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Minister Zhang Zhijun in his planned visit to Guangzhou and Dongguan on October 14.

The scheduled talks will be Hsia’s second meeting with Zhang, following one in Kinmen in May, as well as the fourth set of high-level cross-strait talks since the first official contact between the governments on either side of the Taiwan Strait took place in Beijing in February last year.

“The upcoming discussion will mainly encompass topics such as the progress we have come to accomplish and an overall review of ongoing negotiations,” he told legislators, adding that the council will also take this opportunity to express their discontent over China’s unilateral policy of changing the form of the travel document.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-10-11
By: Chang Kuo-wei and Staff Reporter

Chinese academics have been visiting Taiwan looking for cooperation with

local scholars on addressing territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Mainland scholars attended an international closed-door academic seminar in Taipei on Oct. 7 and 8 on the development and implications of an arbitration case on the South China Sea currently proceeding in the Netherlands.

The initiative comes as the Arbitral Tribunal of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague is expected to give its first ruling on the Philippines’ case against China’s activities in the South China Sea in the next few weeks, which could strike a blow to China’s sovereignty claims in the region.

The tribunal will decide on the legality of China’s “nine-dash line” claim over the South China Sea under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Philippines and China are signatories to the agreement.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/10/11
By: Ku Chuan and S.C.Chang

Taipei, Oct. 11 (CNA) Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said Sunday the most exciting thing about watching an international video game competition is when Taiwanese teams beat other countries’, and “whatever needs to be done to finish off Korea, I’d be more than happy to do.”

Ko made his remarks while addressing a gathering of some 500 people, mostly youngsters, who were enjoying a live broadcast from Paris of competitions between Taiwanese and other teams in the 2015 World Championship of League of Legends (LoL) hosted by Riot Games of the United States.

Sporting a Teemo hat, the mayor made an unexpected appearance at Taipei City Youth Development Office where the crowd was cheering for Taiwan’s ahq that was battling C9 of North America. The Taiwanese team was ahead all the way, beating C9 and thus one step closer to a top eight spot.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: CNA 2015-10-11

With winter just around the corner, the annual black-faced spoonbill season

in Taiwan will start on Nov. 8 this year, the Tainan Ecological Conservation Association said Saturday.

The association will kick off a series of events for black-faced spoonbill-lovers at both the Zengwun Estuary Wetlands and the Black-faced Spoonbill Ecology Exhibition Hall in Tainan, southern Taiwan.

As of Oct. 10, more than 200 of the endangered birds had arrived in Tainan from their breeding areas in Northeast Asia for the winter, with 104 of them spotted in the Zengwun Estuary Wetlands, said Chiu Jen-wu, president of the Tainan Ecological Conservation Association.

With the weather getting cooler, the number of black-faced spoonbills arriving to Tainan is expected to exceed 1,000 by the time the popular bird-watching season starts, Chiu said.     [FULL  STORY]