ALLOWANCE PROBLEMS: The Taipei mayor apologized for the controversy connected to his personal fund that has triggered the downfall of the director of the mayor's office
By Mo Yan-chih
Acknowledging his office's mishandling of the special mayoral allowance, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday apologized for what he called "administrative defects," adding that he would not resign over the matter.

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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed yesterday that Iran would "resist to the end" on its nuclear program, after sparking fresh Western concern by revealing plans to massively ramp up sensitive atomic work.

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SOVEREIGNTY SPAT: The Minister of Economic Affairs took exception to comments made by the Chinese delegate as they discussed free trade pacts
By Jewel Huang
Taiwan's APEC delegate yesterday lashed out at a Chinese delegate's comment during the APEC ministerial meeting that only "sovereign countries" had the right to sign free trade pacts.

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A small tsunami wave hit Japan's northernmost island late yesterday after a major quake in the Kurile Islands triggered a full-scale tsunami warning for areas of northern Japan and Russia's Pacific coast.

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By Shelley Shan
Neither the glamor of being a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, nor the accolades his performances earned during the recent Major League Baseball (MLB) season, have succeeded in transforming Wang Chien-ming (王建民) from a man of few words into a chatterbox.

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A week after US President George W. Bush announced that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would resign, lawyers asked a German prosecutor to investigate Rumsfeld and other US officials for alleged war crimes stemming from the treatment of prisoners in military jails in Iraq and Cuba.

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