After being blocked no less than 41 times in the pan-blue dominated Procedure Committee, the long-stalled NT$480 billion (US$14.4 billion) arms procurement bill has finally made it onto the agenda for formal review by the legislature tomorrow.

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By Huang Tien-lin 黃天麟
There have been reports of an uninterrupted foreign capital inflow into the Taiwanese market over the last 29 days (as of Dec. 15). Foreign investors contributed NT$220.4 billion (US$6.5 billion) during this period, and a total of NT$520.3 billion (US$15.3 billion) for this year. These are record figures. As a result, the nation's stock market bounced back with a gain of 700 points and briefly stood at 6,200 points.

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By Nat Bellocchi 白樂崎
In the US-Taiwan relationship, there are some similarities in the style, and the state, of presidential leadership. In the continuous watch of what China is doing and in the amount of time the respective administrations have to prepare for the next presidential election. In this process, the US ought to be watching the contest between the two major political parties in Taiwan, just as it is without doubt watching events in China.

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By Paul Lin 林保華
When Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) went to pay his respects at the grave of 228 Incident victims Chang Chi-lang (張七郎) and his two sons, Chang's descendents, paying no heed to Ma's little performance, begged him to support the arms procurement bill to give Taiwan the military strength it needs to defend itself. This demand put Ma in a somewhat embarrassing position.

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Legal experts disagree over the extent to which US law allows the president to spy on his compatriots without court oversight
By Toni Locy
To justify creating a domestic spying program, the Bush administration is relying on a law the US Congress passed in the chaotic days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that authorizes the president to wage war against al-Qaeda and its supporters.

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Britain didn't get its way on much of the EU budget this time, but treasurer Gordon Brown need not despair: the fundamentals are fine
By Peter Preston
It was the neatest black hole in Brussels' history: a deal done too late for last Saturday morning's papers and already old news when Sunday came. By then, politics was pushing off for the Christmas holidays. Has anybody seen our missing rebate? Does anybody -- apart from Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown, reported to be "fuming" as usual -- care?

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By Paul Davies
When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he gave a convincing account of how life has evolved over billions of years from simple microbes to the complexity of the Earth's biosphere today. But he pointedly left out how life got started. One might as well speculate about the origin of matter, he quipped. Today scientists have a good idea of how matter originated in the big bang, but the origin of life remains shrouded in mystery.

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