So it's been made official. There will be charter flights serving Taiwanese businessmen during the upcoming Lunar New Year. This time around, carriers from both sides of the Taiwan Strait will participate in providing two-way and non-stop flights between multiple Chinese and Taiwanese international airports. Equally, if not even more noteworthy, is the model of negotiation adopted, adding a third option to the models for cross-strait talks.

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By the Liberty Times editorial
The two sides of the Taiwan Strait appear to have worked out their differences and reached a consensus on the cross-strait chartered flights for the Lunar New Year. This all takes place against the backdrop of the race between the opposition and ruling political parties trying to claim credit and to flirt with Beijing, as well as China's full blown campaign of unification propaganda.

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By Hsu Yung-ming 徐永明
People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) is visiting Washington, and there have been rumors that he will meet with Randall Schriver, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs among other senior government figures. There has been speculation that Soong is taking advantage of the US to put pressure on President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), using US discontent with Chen to constrain his cross-strait policy.

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These discoveries could lead to entirely new industries or even rewrite history, or they could reveal the sobering limits to what we thought we were capable of
By Vivienne Parry
1. How hard it is to clone a human.

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Why a tsunami isn't the same thing as a tidal wave and how overuse has watered down the language of catastrophe
By William Safire
Toward the end of last year, many lexicographers agreed that the word of the year was blog, from "Web log," with its extension of bloggers, commentators with Internet addresses who had joined the panjandrums of political media.

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By Yite Lee
Taiwan's sovereignty is a sensitive issue in Taiwan. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinterpretation of the several important international legal documents and treaties regarding this issue.

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By Colin Spencer
I was intrigued to see in the Taipei Times the coincidence of two unintentionally related reports, "Underground priest detained" and "Communist told to disband" (Jan. 8, pages 5 and 3).

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