Can you name one of the top 10 scandals of the year? How about the Papua New Guinea-Taiwan affair? That's what the Canadian edition of Time magazine said in its Dec. 20 edition, on sale in Canada now.
And how did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here react? Being named on the list of the top 10 scandals of the year by Time is the price that PNG must pay for its capricious attitude, a MOFA spokesman said Wednesday.
Chen Ming-cheng said Taiwan had followed the normal procedures of the international community to forge diplomatic ties with PNG, and that the two had formally signed a communique on mutual recognition.
Only because PNG has a new prime minister, it denies all the facts and switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing at the drop of a hat, Chen said. Such capricious engagement with its so-called "friend" can only harm the country itself in the eyes of the international community, he continued.
Two days after forging formal relations with Taipei on July 5 for an alleged loan amounting to US$2.3 billion, Bill Skate, the PNG prime minister who signed the recognition of ties, stepped down in anticipation of facing a no-confidence parliamentary vote. In a short two weeks after that, a new government was built, and so were its foreign relations.
The top 10 scandals of 1999 listed by Time also included a US congressman's controversial report that accused Beijing of systematic actions to steal confidential US information relating to making nuclear weapons.
Will Harry Potter triumph in Taiwan?
You've no doubt heard about those popular children's books by British author J.K. Rowling and you might have even read some of the books in the series already. The hugely successful books have caused a storm in the US, where the books have received rave reviews and negative reviews -- mostly from some conservative parents -- because of their focus on witches, wizards and the occult. Will the publication of the Harry Potter series have the same impact in Taiwan? Probably not, since witches, wizards and the occult are part of everyday life here.
A Taipei publishing firm has secured the complex character rights for the popular series from Rowling's British publisher, according to a publishing industry source here, and Taiwanese children (and adults) will soon have a chance to read such Harry Potter books as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
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