The Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) campaign to paint the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in particular, as power-hungry lunatics sank to a new low on Tuesday when the KMT released a list of 15 election "tactics" it said the DPP may resort to as the legislative and presidential elections approach.

[ FULL STORY ]

By Lin Cho-shui 林濁水
Taiwan's trade surplus this year reached US$25.1 billion by last month. Yet behind this record figure lie some very worrying facts: The proportion of orders made to Taiwanese companies with factories abroad rose from 45.64 percent in April to 47.39 percent in October. These firm's revenues are one-third larger than that of wholly domestic firms, and the number of foreign workers has reached an average of 67 percent of overseas companies' total employees.

[ FULL STORY ]

By Gloria Hsu 徐光蓉
For many years, the governments of Australia and the US have refused to recognize that human activities influence the global climate and might bring about unimaginable disasters.

[ FULL STORY ]

By Lorna Kung 龔尤倩
Tuesday was an important day for the world's 200 million migrant workers. On this day, the UN passed its International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. Thousands of migrant workers have marched in Taiwan this month to demand that the government provide respite care for disadvantaged families and grant care workers their well deserved right to holidays.

[ FULL STORY ]

Fascination with this romanticized period of history rarely acknowledges that power is still won and abused in the same fashion
By Madeleine Bunting
Christmas is steeped in nostalgia -- that's the point of it. We reminisce about the past, observe (or rebel against) family traditions and fondly assemble a pastiche of European history -- a bit of Victoriana and a lot of the Middle Ages.

[ FULL STORY ]

By Giles Merritt
Friend or foe, or something uneasily in between? That's the question Europe is asking about Russia, and Russia about a newly aggressive Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin's choice of Dmitri Medvedev, chairman of Gazprom, the gas company with an emerging stranglehold on European energy supplies, only throws this question into an even starker light.

[ FULL STORY ]

Particularly after Sept. 11, the US has seen fit to express itself in a manner that engenders displeasure. Positive strategies could reverse this poor trend
By Joseph Nye
The US needs to rediscover how to be a "smart power." That was the conclusion of a bipartisan commission that I recently co-chaired with Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration.

[ FULL STORY ]