What will a former US president do for US$153,000? Sing and dance like a monkey? Juggle? In the case of Bill Clinton, it is something a lot less entertaining -- selling out his integrity, supposing, or course, he had any left. This is precisely what he did yesterday, when he said the cross-strait "reunification process" is "moving in the right direction" during a pro-unification rally in Sydney, Australia.

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By Chen Tze-po 陳子帛
In 1997, Hong Kong's handover was the focus of international attention. The handover of the colony, preceded by 14 years of peaceful transition, lacked precedent. No one believed that China's government could successfully manage Hong Kong's assets after a century of rule by Great Britain. Western media had come to pessimistic conclusions about the future of the colony. Fortune magazine even published a cover story before the handover entitled "Hong Kong is dead."

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By Hsu Chia-ching 徐佳青
I recently saw a poster on the side of a Taipei bus that showed Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wearing a hard hat, the type workers wear on construction sites. The poster reads: "Little brother Ma's advice: be a bit more careful and the mountains won't come tumbling down." Below, there's a big slogan: "Watch me for five minutes and your home will be safer for it." I watched Ma for five minutes, but still couldn't understand how that would make my home any safer. Finally, a line near the bottom explained the riddle. It's actually a call for the citizens of Taipei to maintain revetments and dikes to prevent landslides.

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By Jonathan Power
"Sunshine is dead. Long live the darkness." Is this what US President George W. Bush would have liked to have said this week during his visit to Seoul? Even he, so soon after his "axis of evil" speech, might think that would be over the top.

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By Yang Yung-nane 楊永年
Although the Cabinet's request to overturn the amendments to the Law Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) has been passed, the budget allocation issue has created a confrontation between ruling and opposition parties in both central and local governments. This not only hinders the establishment of mechanisms for negotiation and contacts between the central and local governments, it could politicize intergovernmental issues, which certainly wouldn't benefit the public.

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