Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) may not return from his historic trip to China with a solution to all cross-strait disputes -- but he could have Taiwan's first giant panda in tow, a local Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday.
The paper said yesterday -- without mentioning a source -- that Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Lien and Hu are expected to meet in Beijing this week -- the first high-level contact between leaders of the two sides in more than five decades.
While not confirming the report, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Training
"Our animal specialists have had contacts with their mainland counterparts recently and have received a degree of training," Ma said.
The specialists will be ready to handle the job after given a further few months of intensive training, Ma said.
Ma said bamboo grown in Zhuzihu on Yangmingshan will supply food for the pandas, although more will have to be planted to meet the demand.
Imperiled species
However, as the panda is one of the imperiled species protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), it still requires the approval of the agricultural authorities of both sides before it can be exported from China to Taiwan, Ma noted.
A zoo enclosure could be completed before year's end and staff training could be wrapped up within months -- at a cost of about NT$50 million (US$1.58 million).
Pandas are among the world's rarest animals. About 1,600 giant pandas survive in the wild, mostly in the mountains in southwestern China. Some 160 live in captivity.
Donating the rare animals to prominent world leaders is a tradition that goes back at least to 1972, when then US president Richard Nixon made a historic visit to China.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires