Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Pact brings little benefit: US academic

Taipei Times

The cross-strait service trade agreement is a “perfect political agreement” to bring Taiwan into China’s fold and presents no economic benefits to Taiwan, US academic John Tkacik said.

Tkacik, senior fellow at the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center, made the remarks on Saturday at a forum in Taipei hosted by the World Taiwanese Congress and the Taiwan National Alliance.

Thousands of Chinese ‘missing’ in Taiwan

Taipei Times

Taiwan Solidarity Union lawmakers yesterday called into question the effectiveness of the government’s border control measures, accusing authorities of being lax in keeping tabs on Chinese visitors entering the country.

Without identifying their source, the legislators said that since 1988, a total of 2,768 Chinese nationals have overstayed their permits to visit Taiwan, while 2,327 others entered the nation and are unaccounted for.

Nuclear waste will waste Taiwan

Gloria Hsu 徐光蓉

It has been three years since the Tohoku earthquake struck Japan on March 11, 2011. If the resulting damage had been limited to that caused by the quake and ensuing tsunami, Japan would have finished rebuilding long ago, but the meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant caused by the natural disasters means that reconstruction efforts are far from done.

The Fukushima meltdown was not the first time that several nuclear reactors have gone out of control at once and it was later discovered that an even greater danger was posed by the plant’s interim storage facility and the highly radioactive spent fuel rods being kept there.

Service pact needs redo, not review

Taipei Times Editorial

The cross-strait service trade agreement is finally being reviewed by the legislature, article by article, in a process that neither the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) nor the opposition parties dare take lightly.

On Tuesday night, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators prepared for the review in the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee conference room, while the KMT caucus met earlier in the day to strengthen party morale. KMT lawmakers were warned that anyone who did not show up for the review meetings would be disciplined by the party, because the agreement must be passed.

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