Since becoming head of state, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has maintained that, based on the Constitution, the premier is the administrative chief who has the highest authority over most domestic matters, while the president’s responsibilities chiefly lie in diplomacy, national defense and cross-strait relations.

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By Yao Jen-To 姚人多
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has been in power for more than a month. During this period, three salient topics have called for analysis.

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By Fuldien Li 李復甸
With Taiwan’s unclear international status and increasingly fewer countries recognizing her, the largest challenge for the government is protecting the rights and interests of Taiwanese abroad. Disputes arising from Taiwanese investments in China or fishing in neighboring waters are common. The recent sinking of a Taiwanese fishing boat near the Diaoyutai (釣魚台) islands by the Japanese coast guard highlights the importance of conflict resolution.

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By Angela Lee 李美萍
I was deeply touched by a recent news report about the difficulties that a Thai woman, Yang Hsin-mei (楊心梅), had in obtaining legal Taiwanese identity for two decades despite being married to a Taiwanese man and having a daughter here.

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As little as US$250 million could fund fortification programs that would improve the health of 1 billion people. The G8 and the EU should make such a program a priority
By Marc van Ameringen
Every year, 3.5 million mothers and children below the age of five die in poor countries because they do not have the nutrition they need to fight common diseases. Three-quarters of them could have survived diarrhea or malaria if they had been properly nourished.

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By Simon Romero
When Nurul Asyiqin Ahmad was taken seven months ago to her cell at the National Institute of Feminine Orientation, a prison perched on a hill in this city of slums on the outskirts of Caracas, learning how to play Beethoven was one of the last things on her mind.

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Twenty years ago on Monday, James Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, shook Washington and the world by telling a sweating crowd at a Senate hearing during a stifling heatwave that he was “99 percent” certain that humans were already warming the climate.

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Don’t be a blue executioner

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