Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's (溫家寶) trip to Japan and his landmark speech to the Diet yesterday offered a tantalizing glimpse of what smooth relations between Beijing and Tokyo might look like.

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By Yang Yung-nane 楊永年
The Cabinet is reportedly ready to legalize horse and auto racing in June, and special areas and rules for these sports will be set up following international precedent. In addition to giving Taiwanese an opportunity to bet on such races, this move is expected to boost the tourism industry in southern Taiwan. It seems certain both horse racing and gambling are set to be legalized, maybe because of the influence of vested interests.

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By Chen Chao-chien 陳朝建
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has adopted a variety of pan-blue voter exclusion measures in the public opinion polls used to determine the nominations for its legislators-at-large, legislators and presidential candidate in the year-end legislative elections and next year's presidential election. This decision will affect who is nominated and it will also affect the power of the party's technically dissolved factions. More bluntly, it will have a direct impact on the DPP's intra-party democracy.

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By Lai I-chung 賴怡忠
On March 27, Japan's Supreme Court reversed a second Osaka High Court ruling over the ownership of a student dormitory in Kyoto, saying Taipei had lost its right to file a claim for ownership as the representative of China when Tokyo decided in 1972 to recognize Beijing instead of the Republic of China (ROC). This verdict crushes the illusions for anyone who still tries to deal with the cross-strait issue based on a "one China" framework.

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`Give up the paid job at your peril' is the controversial warning to a new generation of stay-at-home mothers from one of the US' star interviewers. Husbands are unsafe bets and any woman who would try to build her whole life around one by giving up her job to raise his children is indulging in high-risk behavior
By Suzanne Goldenberg
The US media is fairly scrupulous about awarding credit. Researchers are recognized, and so are the Iraqi reporters who go out and gather information for the US foreign correspondents holed up in Baghdad. But even so it was surprising (and cheering) to find in the dedication for The Feminine Mistake, a new book on that perennially charged topic of motherhood and work, the following words: "To my babysitter, Norma."

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