It was with a sense of comeuppance that the Integrity Committee of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) suspended Taitung County Commissioner Kuang Li-chen (鄺麗貞) from the party last week for spending millions of taxpayer dollars on overseas inspection trips.

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The terrorist attack on Aug. 4 in Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region left 16 people dead and 16 injured. Just a few days before the opening of the Olympic Games, this incident — which may only be the tip of the iceberg — has made it much more difficult for Chinese authorities to ensure total security during the Olympics.

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By Stan Chiueh 闕聖豪
China is close to deploying and test-firing a new conventionally armed strategic missile capable of hitting US aircraft carriers and other warships at sea. The missiles, all variants of the Dongfeng-21 intermediate range ballistic missiles, are said to have a range of up to 2,500km and are part of a developing campaign to “deny access” to US aircraft carriers in the event of a conflict across the Taiwan Strait.

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By Chang Yu-hern 張有恆
There have been reports that TransAsia Airways’ discontinuation of its Taipei-Kaohsiung and Taipei-Tainan routes and Mandarin Airlines’ planned discontinuation of its Taipei-Kaohsiung route from next month may result in all flights in western Taiwan being discontinued.

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The conversion of foreign aid money into Myanmar's kyat can lead to losses of up to 25 percent in value, leading many donors to question the intelligence of sending money
By Hla Hla Htay
A rare bird's-eye look at Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta shows the devastation still left from Cyclone Nargis — broken levies, flooded farm roads, the shattered remains of bamboo huts and trees strewn like matchsticks along the coast.

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By Marina Hyde
By the time you read this, world peace should have broken out. It should have broken out at precisely 8:08pm Beijing time on Friday, because International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge made his traditional plea for a worldwide military truce for the duration of the Games. Yet on the off chance that the Taliban are not laying in supplies of popcorn and preparing for two weeks on the sofa, and US and British soldiers are not garlanding their tanks with flowers, now might be the time to question the IOC’s preposterously idealized version of itself.

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Solzhenitsyn's tragedy is that he played a huge role in liberating Russia from totalitarianism, yet he could only chastise ordinary Russians after their liberation
By Nina Khrushcheva
Prophets are supposed to be without honor in their homeland. Yet Moscow has just witnessed the extraordinary sight of Alexander Solzhenitsyn — the once-exiled author of the Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich —– receiving what amounts to a state funeral, with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin acting as chief mourner.

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