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Taiwan Quick Take

PHOTO: CNA

■ Diplomacy
Visa features Taipei 101
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it has changed the appearance of visitor visas to include the Taipei landmark and world's tallest building Taipei 101. "Starting Jan. 11 this year, Taiwan's overseas consular offices have started issuing the new version of the visa in which the Taipei 101 is the background picture," ministry spokesman Michel Lu (呂慶龍) said. The new visa design replaces one featuring the black-faced spoonbill, Lu said.

■ Defense
New AAV-7s deployed
Taiwan has deployed 54 US-made assault amphibious vehicles (AAV-7) to boost its defenses against a possible attack from China, the Chinese-language China Times reported yesterday. The report said Taiwan took delivery of the AAV-7s at the end of last year and has deployed them in the south and around Taipei, the paper said. US military officers are in Taiwan to train the Marine Corps how to use AAV-7s. The amphibious landing vehicles will be commissioned next month, the paper said. The US approved the NT$6.1 billion (US$185 million) sale of 54 AAV-7s to Taiwan in 2002. The AAV-7 can carry 18 armed soldiers at 13kph on water and 25kph to 35kph on land. They have a combat radius of 500km. In the Iraq war, US Marines used the AAV-7s to charge into Baghdad.

■ Protests
Falun Gong protest in Taipei
The Falun Gong-backed Epoch Times newspaper launched a one-week relay hunger strike yesterday outside the second exhibition hall of the Taipei World Trade Center to protest recent violent actions taken against members of their group by the Chinese authorities. The relay hunger strike began earlier this month in North America, with similar protests being held by Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong, Macau and Malaysia. A spokeswoman for the newspaper said Lee Yuan, an Epoch Times computer engineer in the US, was seriously beaten on Feb. 8 in his Atlanta, Georgia, apartment by Chinese agents, who also destroyed computer equipment with which he had maintained the newspaper's Web site. Lee had reportedly succeeded in bypassing Internet restrictions in China to publicize the number of members the paper claims left the Chinese Communist Party. The newspaper said 8 million members have resigned from the party since December 2004. However, the names of the people involved are not published, just a serial number.

■ Society
Lu rallies female officials
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday said that society faces three major problems -- an aging population, gender imbalance and declining rate of marriage -- and that she was forming an association for female elected representatives to help solve the problems. Lu made the remarks at a tea party held for female elected officials at the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon. Lu said there are more men than women, citing statistics showing the man to woman ratio is 110 to 100. Lu said that she was happy to see eight women in the Cabinet, 47 female lawmakers, a female county commissioner. a female mayor and 233 women elected to county and city council seats in last December's local elections.

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