China had warned of ‘serious consequences’ in the lead-up to the visit but has avoided any significant military escalation so far
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/ 12 October 2008
A Taiwan woman is so good at matchmaking that in the past 30 years, she had helped 573 couples tie the knot, a newspaper said on Sunday.
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/ 13 September 2008
A typhoon pounded Taiwan on Saturday, bringing torrential rains and triggering landslides in the central and northern part of the island.
The launch of regular direct flights between China and Taiwan has been hailed as a symbol of progress, but industry workers are not all convinced.
A Taiwan man grieving over the death of his girlfriend climbed inside a morgue freezer to be with her and was only pulled out alive half an hour later, media and an official said on Tuesday. The 41-year-old man was discovered on Monday when workers detected an unusually high temperature in the freezer and realised the hatch was not securely fastened.
Taiwan’s Cabinet will soon lose one of its more colourful members who was notorious for sleeping in Parliament, shouting at legislators, picking his nose in public and shoving a journalist. Tu Cheng-sheng, Education Minister since 2004, will step down next month along with current President Chen Shui-bian.
Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, Ma Ying-jeou, has won more than half the vote in Saturday’s election, the party said, auguring improved ties with diplomatic rival China. Ma had won more than seven million votes, the party said, more than half the total 13-million people who cast their ballot.
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/ 22 February 2008
Tonnes of fish, from carp to exotic tropical specimens, have washed up dead along 320km of beach on Taiwan’s outlying islands because of cold temperatures, a local official said on Friday. About 45 tonnes of fish, some wild and some farmed, appeared on the tourism-dependent Penghu Island archipelago in the Taiwan Strait from February 14.
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/ 30 January 2008
A funeral business union based in the central Taiwan county of Nantou held a lottery draw at a recent dinner party offering as top prize a nice place to store the winner’s ashes after death, Taiwanese media reported on Wednesday. The second prize was a coffin, an organiser of the macabre contest said.
Taiwan cannot match China’s reported -billion aid offer to Malawi, but hopes a legacy of goodwill can convince the African nation not to switch allegiance to its giant neighbour. Taiwan is recognised by just 24, mostly small, impoverished countries, compared to 170 which recognise China.
Taiwan’s Education Minister, Tu Cheng-sheng, on Monday fought a war of words with opposition parliamentarians over whether he had dozed off during an emergency meeting conducted by the island’s leader on measures to deal with Typhoon Krosa.
A strong typhoon headed for China on Sunday after killing five people, injuring 53 and cutting power to more than two million people in Taiwan as it lashed the island with heavy rain and high winds. Typhoon Krosa was on course to reach China at noon while continuing to dump rain on Taiwan, forecasters said.
Typhoon Krosa slammed into Taiwan with strong winds and heavy rains on Saturday forcing hundreds to evacuate and cutting power to thousands as it headed toward mainland China. In China, authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang ordered officials back to work from their National Day vacation to prepare for the storm, the China Daily reported.
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/ 9 September 2007
Taiwan was flushed with pride on Sunday as favourite son and world famous director Ang Lee took the Venice film festival’s top award for his steamy thriller Lust, Caution, just two years after winning with Brokeback Mountain.
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/ 4 September 2007
Stinky tofu, a south China delicacy loved by some and detested by others, finally wore out its welcome in one Taiwan neighbourhood. Environmental authorities got the high court’s permission on Monday to fine a suburban Taipei restaurant for exceeding the stench limit by three times, a county official said on Tuesday.
A cracked pylon may have caused a fuel leak that led to the fire and explosion of the China Airlines Boeing 737-800 at Japan’s Naha airport two days ago, Taiwan media reported on Wednesday. The 157 passengers and eight crew escaped safely, barely three minutes before the jet caught fire and exploded into three parts.
Strong winds and rain lashed Taiwan as Typhoon Sepat made landfall on Saturday, cutting power supplies to more than 70 000 homes and forcing more than 1 000 people to evacuate and airlines to delay flights. Two cars were crushed by a falling billboard in Taipei.
A Taiwan young woman has been indicted for sending dog poop as a birthday gift to a colleague over a personal dispute, a newspaper said on Saturday. Liu Chia-pei (27) and Ma Wan-ching work in the same company in Taichung, central Taiwan, but often argue because Liu likes to have the air conditioning turned on all the time.
Taiwanwill choose its top China negotiator as its next premier for lack of other job candidates as the former premier leaves to ease tension in the ruling party ahead of the 2008 presidential race. Chang Chun-hsiung, chairperson of the Straits Exchange Foundation, will replace Su Tseng-chang, who announced on Saturday he would step down.
Taiwan said for the first time on Tuesday it would fire missiles at Chinese airfields and missile launch sites if its arch-rival ever attacked the island. The details emerged as Taiwan military leaders discussed the results of simulated attack scenarios, part of the island’s annual military exercises that began last month.
Taiwan will cordon off part of a highway to facilitate the annual migration of the purple butterfly, whose immigration is compared to that of the monarch butterfly in Mexico. Highway authorities are scheduled to close off the outer lanes of the highway in west Taiwan, to prevent the butterflies from being hit and killed by passing cars.
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/ 21 February 2007
Overcoming heat, kidnap threats, land mines and border snafus, three runners from Taiwan, Canada and the United States have completed their six-nation, 7 300km cross-Sahara ultra-endurance marathon in 111 days, a Taiwan newspaper reported on Wednesday.
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/ 25 January 2007
A moderate earthquake rattled Taiwan on Thursday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage were reported. The magnitude of the earthquake and the epicentre of the tremor were not immediately available. Earthquakes occur frequently in Taiwan, which lies on a seismically active stretch of the Pacific basin.
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/ 19 January 2007
A lawmaker hurled her shoes at the speaker of Taiwan’s Parliament, grazing his face in a mass brawl on Friday over a controversial Bill on the island’s top election body. As curses flew, television pictures showed a crowd of legislators from the governing Democratic Progressive Party angrily occupying the podium in a bid to stop voting by the opposition-controlled legislature.
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/ 26 December 2006
A major earthquake struck southern Taiwan on Tuesday, triggering a tsunami of up to 1m that could hit the Philippines, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said. There were no immediate reports of damage from southern Taiwan. The United States Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 7,1 and occurred at a depth of 10m.
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/ 3 September 2006
Doctors at a Taipei hospital are fighting to save a girl’s life after an eel jumped into her mouth and ruptured her esophagus, a newspaper said on Sunday. The Apple Daily said a three-year-old girl was attacked by the eel a month ago and has been kept at the intensive-care unit at the Mackay Memorial hospital ever since.
Typhoon Saomai moved closer to Taiwan’s capital on Wednesday, with landfall expected on Thursday morning, as a tropical storm fizzled at the south end of the island and another changed its course, veering toward the east of Japan. Saomai approached from the east with sustained winds of 155kph and gusts up to 191kph.
A typhoon triggered floods and knocked out power in some areas of Taiwan on Tuesday, forcing schools and offices to close, and then swept towards China, where hundreds of thousands were evacuated. As of 7am GMT, the centre of typhoon Kaemi was just off China’s eastern coast moving north-west at 17kph toward the city of Xiamen.
The United States has agreed to sell Taiwan 66 F-16C/D warplanes to boost Taipei’s self defence against China. Tsai Ming-shien, former deputy secretary general of the National Security Council, closed the deal on the F-16C/D warplanes early this month in California during annual Taiwan-US defence meetings.
Taiwan’s tourism shares have soared over the past few months despite an overall drop in the market, but analysts say a few can rise even further as the island prepares to cut restrictions on travellers from rival China. Currently, Taiwan allows Chinese tourists to enter its territory only through a third point, usually Hong Kong.
To prevent students from cheating during school exams, Taiwan on Monday banned the use of invisible-ink pens. ”We will bar students from using invisible-ink pens during exams because many students are cheating with these pens,” Lee Yu-Chuan, from the Education Ministry’s Department of Higher Education, told a news conference.
Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian said on Sunday that Taiwan wants to follow South Africa’s model of ending apartheid to seek peace with China. Chen made the statement while receiving former South African president FW de Klerk, who is in Taipei to attend a seminar on reconciliation.