Last week Formosa TV started a one-hour English news program. We wish FTV well in this project, but we cannot help thinking that the auguries are not on the TV company's side. In the last 10 years too many of these programs have launched and flopped to count. They have suffered from a toxic mixture of a lack of financial and editorial commitment on the part of the TV companies, abysmally low production standards, a lack of understanding as to who, if anyone, might be the audience for such programs and a concomitant failure to know how to appeal to any audience there might be.

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By Chen Chin-huang 陳錦煌
It was astonishing to see extensive TV news coverage of the aftermath of Typhoon Aere: the mudslides in Tuchang Village in Hsinchu County's Wufeng Township, the first major flooding in more than three decades in Sanchung and Hsinchuang in Taipei County, the collapse of Miaoli County's Kueishan Bridge. This is the second time in less than two months that northern Taiwan has experienced such typhoon-related destruction.

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By Jin Zhong 金鐘
If Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) were still alive, he would be 100 years old this year. His birthday is Oct. 8, and the Chinese authorities have launched a whole series of commemorative events for the "greatest man of the 20th century." These activities have even extended to Hong Kong, and much has been made of his "one country, two systems" policy. But the western media is more sceptical, wondering whether someone who ordered troops to fire on student protesters really deserves this degree of commemoration.

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War psychology means the public will ascribe heroic qualities to even the least deserving ruler.
By Paul Krugman
The best book I've read about America after Sept. 11 isn't about either America or Sept. 11. It's War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, an essay on the psychology of war by Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent. Better than any poll analysis or focus group, it explains why US President George W. Bush, despite policy failures at home and abroad, is ahead in the polls.

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While patriotism has risen since the Sept. 11 attacks, acrimony between the two parties is widening, affecting US foreign policy
By Richard Halloran
Three years after the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults on New York and Washington, two seemingly contradictory currents run through the veins of America, currents that will affect the US' relations with every nation in Asia.

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By David Aaronovitch
If the polls are right, and I begin to think that they might be, then US President George W. Bush will be re-elected in November. And we on the left and center-left of politics will somehow have to account for it.

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By Michael Yeun
Over the past half century, Taiwan's sovereignty has been violated by the Republic of China (ROC) and the People's Republic of China and neglected by most of the world.

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