■ Diplomacy
Clinton to visit on Sunday
Former US president Bill Clinton will meet President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) during a whirlwind visit to Taipei on Sunday that could annoy China. Clinton will arrive in Taipei at the invitation of the government and deliver a speech on democracy and security, said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶隆). Lu said a dinner meeting between Clinton and Chen was being arranged for Sunday. Clinton visited China this week where he praised Beijing's efforts to combat AIDS and pledged his foundation would donate drugs and offer training to doctors. As president, Clinton sent two aircraft carrier groups to waters near Taiwan in 1996 to cool tensions after Beijing test-fired missiles in an attempt to sway voters in Taiwan's first direct presidential election that year.
■ Diplomacy
Lu to visit Latin America
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) announced Wednesday that she will be heading a business delegation to visit El Salvador and Guatemala next month in a bid to cement Taiwan's relations with the two Latin American countries. Among the issues to be discussed will be proposals to build a "Taiwan Park" industrial zone in El Salvador, and to establish a vocational training center called the Taiwan Institute for Development. The visit comes amid speculation that China is making investment overtures to some or all of Taiwan's 25 diplomatic allies in the region, urging them to recognize Beijing rather than Taipei. Guatemalan Economics Minister Marcio Cuevas plans to visit China in April, prompting Taipei to worry that Taiwan-Guatemala ties are shaky. Lu's visit will begin March 12.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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