Taiwan aims to get a crack at the growing Chinese-language learning market, but the government has been less than friendly and ready to please
By Jules Quartly
Learning Chinese is hot, but you would hardly know it here in Taiwan, where many people want to speak English. From kindergarten to business school they believe it is the key to higher earnings. They may be right, but the gains of teaching the world to speak their own language have been relatively neglected and the government is scratching its head and wondering what to do about it.

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The Oscar-nominated director of `United 93' has no qualms about Tinseltown
By Marc Brown
It was not long ago that people would talk of Paul Greengrass as one of the most exciting TV directors of his generation. Now, in an amazingly short space of time, he is one of the most exciting Hollywood directors of his generation, trusted by studio chiefs to spend their millions in the best way he sees fit.

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Despite riling some readers, foreign bloggers are shining a new light on Taiwan
By Ron Brownlow
Michael Turton was seeing too many reporters parachute into Taiwan and write what he felt were slanted, ill-informed stories. He had enough of "Beijing propaganda" and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT, 國民黨) "handlers" framing the debate for Western media discourse on Taiwan.

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John Wood quit the upper echelons of Microsoft to furnish children from developing nations with an education, and he has succeede beyond his wildest dreams
By Bradley Winterton
Nepal is in the news. When the Maoists took their seats in the legislature for the first time earlier this month the country was widely perceived as being all set to become a tourist magnet once again. But some brave individuals stuck it out during the dark years, among them former Microsoft marketing director John Wood, now celebrated for his "Room To Read" book-donation enterprise, pioneered in the 1990s.

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Larry J. Kolb, in `America at Night,' takes his readers on a breathless rummage through the nation's dirty laundry, and some of it stinks to high heaven
By Janet Maslin
In his first book, Overworld, Larry J. Kolb told a dizzying, spy-studded story of his lifelong adventures as the son of a senior US intelligence official. It was an amazing account, almost too much so, filled with events far too strange for fiction. And it was packed with guest stars, from Muhammad Ali to Ronald Reagan. For a man who had lived so much of his life in the shadows, Kolb used this book to cast an improbably bright light.

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