--by Brian Hsu
9.
National Baseball team set for Athens
The national baseball team won the right to take part in next year's Olympic Games, to be held in Athens, Greece, after Japan's 2-0 victory over South Korea on Nov. 7.
It was the first time in 12 years that Taiwan succeeded in gaining admission to the Olympic baseball tournament.
The last time was in 1992 in Barcelona, where Taiwan took a silver medal -- the highest award the country's baseball team has received at the Olympics.
The team won its ticket to next year's Olympics with a dramatic 5-4 victory over South Korea and a breathtakingly tense 3-1 win over China in the final round of the Asian Baseball Championship held in Sapporo, Japan, in early November.
Taiwan and Japan will represent the cream of Asia's baseball talent at the Olympics.
Slugger Chen Chin-feng (
Chen, Chang and pitcher Wang Chien-ming (王建民) were viewed as national heroes after the team triumphed in Japan.
All three married their partners before the end of the year, because 2004 is not an auspicious year for weddings, according to the Chinese horoscope.
After the team's victory in this year's Asian Baseball Championship, baseball has become a sport that has served to unite public sentiment. Everybody, from regular people to legislators, is now crazy about the game.
--by Jewel Huang
10.
'Taiwan' added to passport covers
To more clearly differentiate Taiwan from China, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Sept. 1 finally issued passports with the word "Taiwan" on the cover.
Previously, many people had complained of bad treatment due to being mistaken for Chinese nationals because of the words "Republic of China" -- Taiwan's official name -- on their passports.
The word "Taiwan" in Roman script is placed below the national emblem on the passport's cover, while the rest of the design remained unchanged, including the name "Republic of China," in English and Chinese.
The government originally planned to launch the new passports in February, but the Cabinet decided to postpone their release to avoid complications arising from the US-led military action in Iraq and the SARS epidemic.
The Legislative Yuan on May 20 passed a pair of non-binding resolutions on passport reform that contradicted each another. The first resolution stated that the passports should not be changed, while the second stipulated that the word "Taiwan" should be added to the cover.
The ministry later dropped its original idea of adding the words "Issued in Taiwan" to the cover of new passports after both opposition and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers opposed the idea. Opposition legislators argued that this would be a move toward independence, while DPP lawmakers said it would belittle the country and didn't go far enough in clarifying the nation's identity.
The resolution to just add "Taiwan" to the passports received a boost on July 2, when the DPP's Central Standing Committee urged the Cabinet to adopt the recommendation.
--by Ko Shu-ling
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